England Develops a Voracious Appetite for a New Diet

LONDON — Visitors to England right now, be warned. The big topic on people’s minds — from cabdrivers to corporate executives — is not Kate Middleton’s increasingly visible baby bump (though the craze does involve the size of one’s waistline), but rather a best-selling diet book that has sent the British into a fasting frenzy. “The Fast Diet,” published in mid-January in Britain, could do...

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DealBook: Buffett’s Annual Letter Plays Up Newspapers’ Value

Over the last half-century, Warren E. Buffett has built a reputation as a contrarian investor, betting against the crowd to amass a fortune estimated at $54 billion.Mr. Buffett underscored that contrarian instinct in his annual letter to shareholders published on Friday. In a year when Mr. Buffett did not make any large acquisitions, he bought dozens of newspapers, a business others have shunned....

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The Lede: With Rodman Stunt, American Reality TV and North Korean Propaganda Fuse

Elements of American show business and North Korean propaganda briefly fused on Friday, when the former basketball star Dennis Rodman told reporters in Pyongyang that North Koreans “love” their new leader, Kim Jong-un. “And guess what?” the athlete turned reality TV star added, “I love him — the guy’s awesome.”An Associated Press video report on the end of Dennis Rodman’s visit to North Korea.Speaking...

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Well: A Rainbow of Root Vegetables

This week’s Recipes for Health is as much a treat for the eyes as the palate. Colorful root vegetables from bright orange carrots and red scallions to purple and yellow potatoes and pale green leeks will add color and flavor to your table.Since root vegetables and tubers keep well and can be cooked up into something delicious even after they have begun to go limp in the refrigerator, this week’s Recipes...

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Pictures From the Week in Business

Shari Lanning, assistant professor of anatomy at Ross University in the West Indies, a veterinary college, led a discussion with students as Georgia the dog was examined for a pain evaluation. They don’t teach much at veterinary school about bears, particularly the figurative kind, although debt as large and scary as any grizzly shadows most vet school grads, usually for decades. Nor is there much...

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The Lede: Video of Turkish Premier Comparing Zionism to Anti-Semitism and Fascism

One day after Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told a United Nations forum the world should consider Islamophobia a crime against humanity, “just like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism,” his Israeli counterpart lashed back. “I strongly condemn the remarks made by Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey, comparing Zionism to fascism,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replied on Twitter.I...

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Rodman tells Kim Jong Un he has 'friend for life'

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman hung out Thursday with North Korea's Kim Jong Un on the third day of his improbable journey with VICE to Pyongyang, watching the Harlem Globetrotters with the leader and later dining on sushi and drinking with him at his palace."You have a friend for life," Rodman told Kim before a crowd of thousands at a gymnasium where they sat side by side, chatting...

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Doctor and Patient: Why Failing Med Students Don’t Get Failing Grades

Tall and dark-haired, the third-year medical student always seemed to be the first to arrive at the hospital and the last to leave, her white coat perpetually weighed down by the books and notes she jammed into the pockets. She appeared totally absorbed by her work, even exhausted at times, and said little to anyone around her.Except when she got frustrated.I first noticed her when I overheard her...

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High & Low Finance: Report Lays Out Plan to Reduce Government Role in Home Financing

Can the American mortgage market ever function again without Uncle Sam guaranteeing that lenders will be repaid? It is amazing just how few people think it can. “For the foreseeable future, there is simply not enough capacity on the balance sheets of U.S. banks to allow a reliance on depository institutions as the sole source of liquidity for the mortgage market,” stated a report on...

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IHT Rendezvous: Eve Best Returns to the Globe, This Time as a Director

LONDON — The recent press conference announcing the 2013 season at Shakespeare’s Globe on one level seemed like variations on an ongoing theme.A onetime Falstaff at this address, Roger Allam, is returning to open the season as Prospero in “The Tempest,” directed by Jeremy Herrin, while the perennial favorite, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” will be seen in May in a new staging, this time from the Globe’s...

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