The U.S. once regarded a standing army as a form of tyranny. Now it spends more on defense than all other nations combined. Photograph by Grant Cornett Sixty-two legislators sit on the House Armed Services Committee, the largest committee in Congress. Since January, 2011, when Republicans took…

Series: The Drone War The nomination of John Brennan to be CIA director has prompted intense debate on Capitol Hill and in the media about U.S. drone killings abroad. But the focus has been on the targeting of American citizens – a narrow issue that accounts for a miniscule proportion of the…

Bradley Manning Admits Leaks, Accuses US Military of "Bloodlust" AP Photo FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) -- Bradley Manning, the Army private arrested in the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history, offered to plead guilty Thursday to charges that could send him to prison for 20 years, saying he…

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An artist’s rendering of the Florida Atlantic football stadium, renamed for the GEO Group. Credit... Florida Atlantic University In recent years, where stadium naming rights could be sold, universities and professional sports teams have sold them — to airlines and banks and companies that sell beer,…

Series: Foreclosure Crisis How Banks and Government Fail Homeowners Late last year, the country's bank regulators launched a massive program to evaluate millions of foreclosure cases and compensate homeowners who fell victim to the banks' flawed or illegal practices. Regulators dubbed it the…

Connie Britton Credit... Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times Connie Britton got over it a long time ago, the part that got away. But it’s a good story, and she still tells it with feeling: The year was 1995. Edward Burns, who had just directed her (and starred in) “The Brothers McMullen,” reached…

Corrections Appended: February 26 and March 12, 2013 1. Routine Care, Unforgettable Bills When Sean Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Stephanie's…

Olive oil, wine and nuts are all part of the diet. Credit... Marcelo Del Pozo/Reuters About 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease can be prevented in people at high risk if they switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables,…

Jay-Z is tying the knot with Warner/Chappell Music. Yesterday Warner/Chappell Music, the publishing arm of Warner Music Group, announced deals with Jay-Z to administer the copyrights of both his own songs and those on the music publishing roster of his company, Roc Nation. Warner/Chappell will…

Federal Reserve officials, uneasy with potential risks springing from the central bank's low-interest-rate policies, are split over an early retreat from the experimental programs created to revive the U.S. economy. Minutes released Wednesday from the Fed's January policy meeting show officials…

A senior scientist at Oceana discusses the group’s new study that found that about one-third of fish samples in 12 metropolitan areas were mislabeled. SEATTLE — Many Europeans are fretting these days over horse meat, and whether it might have adulterated their shepherd’s pie. Over here, it’s all…

Credit... Grant Cornett for The New York Times On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America’s largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco,…

Megan Parker, right, a law firm receptionist, and Laura Burnett, a paralegal, are college graduates, as are all their co-workers. Credit... Rich Addicks for The New York Times ATLANTA —The college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the new minimum requirement, albeit an expensive one,…

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This 12-story building on the outskirts of Shanghai is the headquarters of Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army. China’s defense ministry has denied that it is responsible for initiating digital attacks. On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story white…

Sidebar WASHINGTON — Justice Sonia Sotomayor, populist, revealed a paternalistic streak this month, announcing that she had rethought her enthusiasm for video coverage of Supreme Court arguments. At her confirmation hearings in 2009, she said she was in favor of letting citizens see their government…

Critic’s Notebook The owners of Madison Square Garden are now looking to New York City to renew — in perpetuity — the special permit that allows them to operate an arena atop Penn Station, the country’s busiest transit hub. It’s a request the City Council should deny. The last thing New York needs…

Craig and Cara Reichert and their daughter, Kassidy, in Dayton, Wyo. “I will always believe in guns,” Mr. Reichert said. Kameron Reichert killed himself with a family heirloom. Credit... Larry Mayer for The New York Times DAYTON, Wyo. — Craig Reichert found his son’s body on a winter morning, lying…

Yuichiro Sugahara, whose company delivers bento lunchboxes, mostly through fax orders. Credit... Kosuke Okahara for The New York Times TOKYO — Japan is renowned for its robots and bullet trains, and has some of the world’s fastest broadband networks. But it also remains firmly wedded to a…

On a February night 45 years ago, a linebacker on the South Carolina State football team named Robert Lee Davis went with three or four teammates to a bowling alley just off the black college’s campus in Orangeburg. Theirs was not an act of recreation but of political protest. As expected, the…

Photo: photographs: Joe Schildhorn / BFAnyc/Sipa USA / newscom ( hannah); patrick mcmullan ( sherry) ; Charles Eshelman/Getty Images (vanessa); Larry Busacca/Getty Images (ben) Hannah Bronfman scrolls an ornately manicured finger across the iPhone displaying her new app, Beautified , which helps New…

Subscribe Housing analysts have been giddy for the past year about the comeback of their industry, whose collapse led to the Great Recession. Sure, 2012 was actually the third-worst year for housing ever—but it still beat 2010 and 2011. New and existing home sales, housing starts, and prices jumped…

When I read the news that John Brennan was set to appear before the Senate in hopes of becoming of the C.I.A. director, I thought of the group of villagers I met at a seaside hotel in Yemen two years ago. They had driven many miles to see me, coming from the Yemen countryside in a pair of battered…

Along one of New York's most rapidly changing boulevards, a look below the surface exposes what—and who—is really driving gentrification in Crown Heights. Story by Vinnie Rotondaro & Maura Ewing · Photos by Mo Scarpelli · Edited by Brendan Spiegel · 1.15.13 Story by Vinnie Rotondaro & Maura Ewing…

Sunday Routine Zac Posen works with the florist at All Good things to design bouquets for his home and offices. Credit... Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times Twelve years ago, fresh out of college, Zac Posen was a wunderkind of the fashion industry, starting his own label and making his name…

Congress is in the midst of a heated debate over gun control and how best to tamp down on gun violence. And mass shootings like the one that tore through Sandy Hook Elementary School last December are a huge part of that discussion. (Sarah Voisin/The Washington Post ) So how much do we actually know…

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the mixed-race daughter of onetime segregationist senator Strom Thurmond who kept her parentage secret for more than 70 years, has died. She was 87. Vann Dozier of Leevy’s Funeral Home in Columbia said Washington-Williams died Sunday. A cause of death…

Gen. Moisés García Ochoa, far left, did not accomplish his dream of becoming defense minister. His background is exemplary yet enigmatic. Credit... El Siglo de Torreon As Mexico’s military staged its annual Independence Day parade in September, spectators filled the main square of Mexico City to…

A memo outlines the Obama administration’s views on killing American citizens linked to Al Qaeda. WASHINGTON — Obama administration lawyers have asserted that it would be lawful to kill a United States citizen if “an informed, high-level official” of the government decided that the target was a…

Earlier this month, Brian Dennehy started a new job as chief marketing officer of Nordstrom Inc. In his first week, he pulled aside a colleague to ask a question: How hard it is for a nonemployee to enter the building? Mr. Dennehy doesn't have a particular interest in corporate security. He just…

A domestic cat with a European rabbit. Domestic and feral cats are significant predators of a wide range of prey species, including rabbits. Credit... James Morton For all the adorable images of cats that play the piano, flush the toilet, mew melodiously and find their way back home over hundreds of…

A victim of a nightclub fire that left more than 230 dead in Santa Maria, Brazil, was buried on Monday. The city seemed to be in shock after the blaze. Credit... Mauricio Lima for The New York Times SANTA MARIA, Brazil — The band was revving up, and Luciene Louzeiro was right where she wanted to be…

See how this article appeared when it was originally published on NYTimes.com. A couple of weeks ago, on a leisurely Sunday afternoon, 40 people gathered at a church in Washington Heights for a show-and-tell session sponsored by the New York City Preppers Network . One by one, they stood in front of…

Nobody knows what Kevin Garnett will say or do when Carmelo Anthony steps onto the floor in Boston on Thursday night, when the Knicks and the Celtics meet for the first time since Garnett’s on-court posturing turned Anthony into a backstage vigilante early this month in New York. That is the point.…

Richard Drew/Associated Press Morgan Stanley’s headquarters in New York. The financial firm is being sued by a Taiwanese bank over mortgage-backed securities it sold. On March 16, 2007, Morgan Stanley employees working on one of the toxic assets that helped blow up the world economy discussed what…

Linda Riss Pugach, 1937-2013 Linda Riss Pugach with her husband, Burton, in a 2007 film. Credit... Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures and Shoot the Moon Productions She was 22, a sheltered, dark-haired Bronx beauty said to look like Elizabeth Taylor. He was a decade older, a suave lawyer who courted her…

Debunking the social stigma around late risers, or what Einstein has to do with teens’ risk for smoking. “Six hours’ sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool,” Napoleon famously prescribed. (He would have scoffed at Einstein, then, who was known to require ten hours of sleep for…

Tony Goldwyn, left, and Kerry Washington in “Scandal,” in which he plays the president and she a Washington fixer. Credit... Kelsey McNeal/ABC “Scandal,” now in its second season, has been a success for ABC. Last week the show had 3.52 million viewers aged 18 to 49 and 8.4 million total viewers.…