Live update inauguration 2013: Focus on historic arc of 1st black president

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama publicly took the oath of office for his second term Monday in a ceremony heavily laced with references...

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A 'Courage Board' for All Conditions

Rating: 9/10 Nearly flawless; buy it now It’s easy to guess what The Hovercraft was built for just by looking at it: The short swallowtail and the big blunted nose all scream “powder hound.”I did my first series of tests in early December up in Lake Tahoe, and there was a lot more crust, ice and grooms than powder, so I took it out without expecting...

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“Les Miserables” soundtrack tops UK albums chart

LONDON (Reuters) – The soundtrack of the Oscar-nominated movie “Les Miserables” climbed to the top spot in the UK albums chart, the first film cast recording to do so since Madonna’s “Evita” in 1997, the Official Charts Company said on Sunday.A film version of a hugely successful stage musical based on a novel by 19th century French writer Victor Hugo, “Les Miserables” has already picked up a Golden...

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Recipes for Health: Lentil, Celery and Tomato Minestrone

Andrew Scrivani for The New York TimesIf you did a lot of cooking over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays you may have some celery hearts lingering in your refrigerator. You needed a few branches for a stew, a stock, or a soup, so you bought a whole bunch, and here it is weeks later and the rest of the celery is wilting in the produce drawer. This doesn’t have to happen if you think of...

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DealBook: In Euro Zone, Signs of Progress and Fears of Complacency

PARIS – This may be the year that Europe stops being the ticking time bomb of the global economy.Ireland is on track to leave international bailout limbo by summer. Talk of Greece leaving the euro is off the table. And financial speculators have generally stopped betting the euro zone will blow up.But even as the sense of emergency fades, Europe is potentially facing a starker problem.For three years,...

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U.S., other nations await Algeria death toll

CAIRO— ...

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Soap Bubble Nebula

Informally known as the "Soap Bubble Nebula", this planetary nebula (officially known as PN G75.5+1.7) was discovered by amateur astronomer Dave Jurasevich on July 6th, 2008. It was noted and reported by Keith Quattrocchi and Mel Helm on July 17th, 2008. This image was obtained with the Kitt Peak Mayall 4-meter telescope on June 19th, 2009 in the H-alpha (orange) and [OIII] (blue) narrowband filters....

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Chastain bests Arnold, Wahlberg at box office

NEW YORK (AP) — Jessica Chastain easily outmuscled Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mark Wahlberg over the weekend, topping the box office with her supernatural horror film “Mama.”According to studio estimates Sunday, “Mama” earned $ 28.1 million. Chastain held the top two spots with both “Mama” and the Osama bin Laden manhunt drama “Zero Dark Thirty,” for which she’s nominated by the best actress Oscar....

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Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in...

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N.T.S.B. Rules Out a Cause for Battery Fire on 787 Dreamliner

Federal investigations said Sunday that they had ruled out excessive voltage as the cause of a battery fire on a Boeing 787 in Boston this month, widening the mystery into what led to the grounding of the world’s most technologically advanced jet after a second battery-related problem last week. With investigators focused on the plane’s lithium-ion batteries, the National Transportation Safety...

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