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Let me explain. The AT&T-TCI deal, unveiled with great fanfare last June, featured the creation of a fancy new security to help AT&T’s stock-market value. Staid AT&T was joining the designer-stock crowd. The new AT&T security, called a tracking stock, was to be tied to the performance of AT&T’s consumer long-distance and wireless businesses and to the cable-TV business it was buying from TCI. But there’s nothing about the tracking stock in the mailing, which went to TCI’s holders as well as AT&T’s....

The company that profited from Plachter’s folly: Nu Skin International, a Utah-based multilevel-marketing firm that’s signing on thousands of eager “distributors”–many of them doctors, lawyers, coaches, even former professional football players. Its annual meetings feature such high-profile, high-dollar speakers as Ronald Reagan and Bill Cosby. Apparently, many law-enforcement officials don’t buy the company’s slogan: “All of the good, none of the bad.” The Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission have contacted the company, and the offices of attorneys general in at least seven states are looking at it....

Even pros like Yaskevich have been blind-sided by the tidal wave of HIV that’s hit Russia over the past two years. “This is a serious threat,” she says, likening it to a “neutron bomb.” That bomb has already exploded among intravenous drug users. The question is when it will go off in the general population. Officially, Russia has diagnosed 129,261 new cases of HIV over the past year and a half, including this July....

The little explorers sit, transfixed, in a nuclear-research lab where ordinary field trips do not tread. Harold Myron, an Argonne National Laboratory physicist, has posed the most crucial of questions: “Did your true love give you gold? Or mere brass?” Twenty-six children record data as an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer - a machine so sophisticated that some physics grad students never encounter it - analyzes the necklace in question. Connie Taylor has spent two months preparing her inner-city Chicago pupils for this moment....

Just 41, David Miliband is one of the youngest ministers in government. Yet insiders tip him as the party’s next-leader-but-one. Some go further still. Despite a dazzling political rise from parliamentary newcomer to Environment secretary in just five years, Blair’s favorite lieutenant has made no obvious enemies. So, some suggest, why not even skip a generation and go straight to him as a P.M. with the potential to unite a faction-ridden party?...

Rumors have been floating around about a Metal Gear Solid remake or collection of remasters to be brought to modern consoles, specifically the PS5. The strongest rumors point towards a deal between Sony and Konami to have Bluepoint Games create a remake of the original Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation 5. With many fans concerned about the future of the franchise without the Kojima touch, capitalizing on nostalgia and games that are already highly regarded might be the best move for Konami to make with its iconic IP....

Why the national obsession over a million dollars? It didn’t take Regis Philbin to make “Who wants to be a millionaire?” a rhetorical question. A seven-figure sum has always looked attractive. But now, thanks to rising real-estate values and the turbo-charged stock market, it’s an attainable marker for success. Roughly half of all Americans are invested in the market these days, and stock holdings have replaced politics, weather and sports as the go-to conversational icebreaker....

The first of the modern magical realists was the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier. The French surrealists would put a sewing machine on a dissecting table; the absurd objects together would cause an event or a juxtaposition to seem surreal. Carpentier, living with the surrealists in France, realized that in Latin America, you don’t have to put them together. In Latin America you will find a white mule on a piano....

Many of Hanoi’s prospective partners are beginning to share some of its apprehensions about China. When Beijing recently occupied a reef off the coast of the Philip-pines–800 miles from the nearest point in China–Manila and the other members of ASEAN (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Brunei) surprised the Chinese by protesting as a group. No one wants trouble in the South China Sea, the pathway for 80 percent of Japan’s imported oil and a strategic link between the Pacific and Indian Oceans....

GILES: Based on the articles I’ve read, journalists seem scared to meet you because you wrote such unsettling stuff early on–and then they seem shocked that you’re just a nice intellectual. McEWAN: Yes. They’re all disappointed that I’m not, you know, dripping in blood. Did you ever figure out what drew you to such dark material as a young man? I can’t give you a very profound answer. What I can say is that there was something quite reactive about those early stories....

Now, a new study shows that a low-quality diet is linked to an increased risk, regardless of a person’s genetic risk. Although there is data that suggests following a healthy diet and lifestyle is linked to a reduced type 2 diabetes risk, regardless of genetic risk factors, various limitations have made it difficult to definitively determine whether these interventions can truly impact diabetes risk. “Previous studies have shown that both genes and diet are associated with the risk of diabetes,” Jordi Merino, PhD, a research associate in the diabetes unit and center for genomic medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital and lead study author, told Verywell....

Tip: Ditch the six-speed for the five-speed automatic and save about $2,400.

Why does the bull keep raging through the economic briar patch? Over the short term, investors are betting that a slowing economy will keep inflation in check and persuade the Federal Reserve to let interest rates drift lower. In the long run, most economists believe, new investment, export growth and government spending will push overall growth for the rest of this year a little faster than the 1 percent pace of the last six months....

In nothing less than a minor miracle, the euro zone is back. The Continent’s major economies beat GDP expectations in the second quarter of the year, resulting in the strongest growth in six years. The euro zone grew almost 1 percent last quarter, outperforming the United States, Britain and Japan. The upshot is that the euro zone will likely grow about 2.5 percent this year–up from 1.3 percent in 2005....

After 10 months of civil war in what used to be Yugoslavia, perhaps 1.5 million people are homeless. At least 700,000 citizens of Bosnia and Hercegovina have been dispossessed in the last month alone. The Serbian attacks were particularly savage on Bosnia’s Muslims–44 percent of the population. But every ethnic group is suffering. In the former Yugoslav state as a whole, half a million Croats have been uprooted from areas overrun by Serbs....

Valium may be the healthier choice. Yes, anthrax is a deadly germ with real potential as a weapon. But our fear now poses a greater health threat than the bacterium itself. Despite recent events in Florida, New York and Nevada, a typical civilian’s chances of getting infected are still vanishingly small. Taking Cipro may help us feel less vulnerable, but the drug itself can have a range of adverse effects, especially in children....

Beane was among 1,109 customers in the East Bay Municipal Utility District who were fined for using more than 1,000 gallons of water per day, according to the San Jose Mercury News. In fact, the A’s executive vice president of baseball operations was responsible for the third-highest intake of the group at 5,996 gallons per day. MORE: 15 unique facts about Oakland’s former ‘Big Three’ Beane told the Mercury News he has tried to cut back on water consumption, a large portion of which is used to maintain his expansive landscaped yard....

Did George Patton think that way? Did Rambo? Forget it. But Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf does, and it has made him the military hero the United States has yearned for ever since Vietnam. Briefing the country on television last week, he stood 6 feet 3 in his desert fatigues, a Combat Infantryman’ s Badge and paratrooper’ s wings on his barrel chest, four stars on his rumpled collar. He talked morals and character along with strategy and tactics, the just cause as well as the will to power....