'Blade Runner' Oscar Pistorius Charged With Girlfriend's Murder

In a tragic epilogue to the inspiring story of a man who never gave up, Olympian Oscar Pistorius — who ran alongside able-bodied athletes on futuristic blades of carbon fiber as millions of people watched — has been charged with murder in the shooting death of his girlfriend.News of the 26-year-old runner’s arrest in his hometown of Pretoria, South Africa, following the shooting death of model...

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Doctor and Patient: Afraid to Speak Up to Medical Power

The slender, weather-beaten, elderly Polish immigrant had been diagnosed with lung cancer nearly a year earlier and was receiving chemotherapy as part of a clinical trial. I was a surgical consultant, called in to help control the fluid that kept accumulating in his lungs.During one visit, he motioned for me to come closer. His voice was hoarse from a tumor that spread, and the constant hissing from...

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Media Decoder Blog: CBS Reports Record Operating Income for 4th Quarter

The CBS Corporation set records in the fourth quarter for operating income and adjusted operating income, the company said Thursday, but the results were short of some analysts’ expectations, causing its share price to fall slightly in after-hours trading.The adjusted net earnings of $414 million produced earnings per share of 64 cents, also a new quarterly record for CBS, though some analysts had...

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Dorner manhunt: Investigators work to ID charred human remains

After what LAPD Chief Charlie Beck called "a bittersweet night," investigators Wednesday were in the process of identifying...

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Domestic-Drone Industry Prepares for Big Battle With Regulators

For a day, a sandy-haired Virginian named Jeremy Novara was the hero of the nascent domestic drone industry. Novara went to the microphone at a ballroom in a Ritz-Carlton outside Washington D.C. on Wednesday and did something many in his business want to do: tenaciously challenge the drone regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration to loosen restrictions on unmanned planes over the...

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Phys Ed: Getting the Right Dose of Exercise

Phys EdGretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.Fitness TrackerMarathon, half-marathon, 10k and 5K training plans to get you race ready.A common concern about exercise is that if you don’t do it almost every day, you won’t achieve much health benefit. But a commendable new study suggests otherwise, showing that a fairly leisurely approach to scheduling workouts may actually be more beneficial than...

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Stock Indexes End Mixed

The stock market lacked direction on Wednesday, as a slump in McDonald’s stock helped pull the Dow Jones industrial average below 14,000. Other major market indexes were marginally higher. McDonald’s was among the biggest decliners in the Dow, losing $1.10, to $94, as investors worried that Americans were spending less on eating out after a rise in Social Security taxes at the beginning...

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Christopher Dorner, wildlife officers got into car-to-car gun battle

Fugitive  Christopher Dorner suddenly resurfaced Tuesday afternoon, engaging in a vehicle-to-vehicle gun battle with California...

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Vertu's $10K Smartphone Rings With Bling

Vertu, the company that makes phones for the rich and technologically illiterate, has finally made a smartphone, the Android-powered Vertu Ti. And because it is a Vertu, the Ti is ridiculously expensive and technologically underwhelming.You think the iPhone is pricey? The Vertu Ti starts with a $9,600 price tag. And yes, that’s the unsubsidized price*. For that kind of money, you’d expect...

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Well: Straining to Hear and Fend Off Dementia

At a party the other night, a fund-raiser for a literary magazine, I found myself in conversation with a well-known author whose work I greatly admire. I use the term “conversation” loosely. I couldn’t hear a word he said. But worse, the effort I was making to hear was using up so much brain power that I completely forgot the titles of his books.A senior moment? Maybe. (I’m 65.) But for me, it’s complicated...

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