Africa Must Take Lead in Mali, France Says

Marco Gualazzini for The New York TimesA French armored vehicle patrolled a strategic bridge over the Niger River in Markala, Mali, on Saturday. PARIS — With French officials saying confidently on Saturday that an advance by Islamist militants on Bamako, Mali’s capital, had been halted, France’s foreign minister told African leaders that “our African friends need to take the lead” in a multilateral...

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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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Ex-Ravens WR Evans still feels part of team

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — While Lee Evans awaits another chance in the NFL, he'll be rooting for the Baltimore Ravens in Sunday's AFC championship rematch with New England.The wide receiver who couldn't hold onto a pass in the end zone a year ago — which likely would have sent the Ravens into the Super Bowl — has no regrets. Except, maybe, that he's not part of the Ravens this time around.Evans says...

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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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Corner Office: Kon Leong of ZL Technologies, on Encouraging Creativity

This interview with Kon Leong, co-founder, president and chief executive of ZL Technologies, an e-mail and file archiving company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. Tell me about some important leadership lessons you’ve learned. A. One of my early jobs was selling computer hardware. What I learned about selling was probably more valuable than my M.B.A. I had seen selling...

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British Leader, David Cameron, Sees Wider Threat in Algeria Attack

Oli Scarff/Getty ImagesPrime Minister David Cameron en route to Parliament to deliver a statement on the Algeria hostage crisis. LONDON — With more than 60 hostages still missing and many feared dead, Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament on Friday that the Qaeda-linked attack on a remote Algerian gas installation demonstrated the need for Britain and its western allies, including the United...

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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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Your Money: Finding Investment Advice for More Modest Retirement Accounts

If you’re perfectly capable of running your own retirement savings, selecting the right mix of low-cost investments, rebalancing at the right time and not buying and selling out of fear or greed, then good for you. But the majority of people — maybe the vast majority — are not like that. They may be smart enough to do the right thing, in theory, but they forget or slip up or are taken in...

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IHT Rendezvous: Jihadist Kingpin Suspected in Hostage Seizure

LONDON — Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed smuggler-jihadist said to be behind the seizure of foreign hostages at a gas plant in Algeria, has been a notorious kingpin of the Sahara for more than a decade.As a successful kidnapper, cigarette smuggler — he is nicknamed “Mr. Marlboro” — and go-between for Al Qaeda, Mr. Belmokhtar has been a wanted man in his native Algeria after returning from training...

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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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China Arrests 7 in New Effort to Stop Tibetan Self-Immolations

BEIJING — The authorities in northwest China have detained seven people they claim organized the fatal self-immolation of a Tibetan villager in October, photographed his burning body and then sent the images abroad. The arrests, announced Tuesday by Xinhua, the official news agency, suggest that the Chinese government is increasing the use of its newest strategy against the politically motivated...

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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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