Yoda statue among features of new N. Calif. park

SAN ANSELMO, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California city has approved a new downtown park to be built on land donated by filmmaker George Lucas that will feature statues of Indiana Jones and Yoda, two of his most popular characters.The Marin Independent Journal reports (http://bit.ly/Ws4CcS ) that the San Anselmo Planning Commission voted unanimously Monday to approve the park, which could be completed...

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Economic Scene: Health Care and Pursuit of Profit Make a Poor Mix

Thirty years ago, Bonnie Svarstad and Chester Bond of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered an interesting pattern in the use of sedatives at nursing homes in the south of the state. Patients entering church-affiliated nonprofit homes were prescribed drugs roughly as often as those entering profit-making “proprietary” institutions. But patients in proprietary...

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DealBook: S.E.C. Enforcement Chief, Robert Khuzami, Steps Down

Robert Khuzami, a former terrorism prosecutor who revamped the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement unit, is stepping down from the agency after an aggressive four-tenure.His departure signals the end of an important chapter in the history of the agency, which has been praised for taking significant actions against some of Wall Street’s largest banks after the financial crisis but also...

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An Appraisal: Ada Louise Huxtable, Appraisal of an Architecture Critic

Gene Maggio/The New York TimesThe architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable died on Monday at 91. The great architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, who died on Monday at 91, started writing for The New York Times in 1963 and just a few weeks ago was still making the most of her bully pulpit for The Wall Street Journal, railing against proposed changes to the New York Public Library building at 42nd...

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Target to match some rivals’ online prices year-round

(Reuters) – Target Corp said on Tuesday it will match on a year-round basis the prices found on the websites of key rivals Amazon.com Inc, Best Buy Co Inc, Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Toys R Us, its latest tactic to hold onto shoppers focused on price.The move extends an online price-matching program that Target introduced over the holiday season and which was supposed to last only from November 1 to...

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Spielberg earns 11th Directors Guild nomination

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Steven Spielberg has extended his domination at the Directors Guild of America Awards, earning a nomination Tuesday for his Civil War epic "Lincoln" to pad the record he already held to 11 film nominations from the guild.Also nominated were past winners Kathryn Bigelow for her Osama bin Laden thriller "Zero Dark Thirty"; Tom Hooper for his musical "Les Miserables"; and Ang Lee for...

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Oil Sand Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level

Todd Korol/ReutersAn oil sands mine Fort McMurray, Alberta. OTTAWA — The development of Alberta’s oil sands has increased levels of cancer-causing compounds in surrounding lakes well beyond natural levels, Canadian researchers reported in a study released on Monday. And they said the contamination covered a wider area than had previously been believed. For the study, financed by the Canadian...

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DealBook: JPMorgan's Staley to Join BlueMountain Capital

James E. Staley, a longtime JPMorgan Chase executive who served as the firm’s head of investment banking until this summer, is leaving the bank to join BlueMountain Capital Management as a managing partner, the hedge fund said on Tuesday.The firm he is joining, a nine-year-old hedge fund with $12 billion in assets, profited from betting against JPMorgan by taking the other side of a bet on corporate...

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At Hearing, Officer Tells of Suspect’s Calm After Colorado Massacre

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — A police officer testified at a preliminary hearing here on Monday that when he responded to emergency calls about a mass shooting at a crowded movie theater this summer that he found the suspected gunman standing calmly outside his car in a parking lot just moments after he had opened fire inside, the authorities say, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others. “He was...

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Kuwait sentences second man to jail for insulting emir: lawyer

DUBAI (Reuters) – A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to two years in prison on Monday for insulting the country’s ruler on Twitter, his lawyer said, the second to be jailed for the offence in as many days.The U.S.-allied Gulf Arab state has clamped down in recent months on political activists who have been using social media websites to criticize the government and the ruling family.Kuwait has seen a...

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