Israel-Turkey ties strained by reports of spy exposure
JERUSALEM — Persistently strained relations between Israel and Turkey have not been helped by a report that, last year, Turkey revealed to Iran the identities of up to 10 Iranians who had spied for Israel.
Snowden says he took no secret files to Russia
WASHINGTON — Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, said in an extensive interview this month that he did not take any secret NSA documents with him to Russia when he fled there in June, assuring that Russian intelligence officials could not get access to them.
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Among Goldman Sachs employees, the chatter started months ago that 2013 was going to be a good bonus year. The Wall Street bank began the year strong, and despite concerns about the economy, its profit doubled over year-ago levels in the second quarter.
Oil companies are sued in waste of natural gas
HOUSTON — In the sharpest challenge yet to the surge in flaring of natural gas in the Bakken shale oil field, North Dakota mineral owners this week filed 10 class-action lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in lost royalties from some of the nation’s largest oil companies.
Shutdown over, government slowly gets back to normal
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government sputtered back to life Thursday after President Barack Obama and Congress ended a 16-day shutdown, clearing the way for federal agencies to again deliver services, reopen public facilities, and welcome hundreds of thousands of furloughed employees back to work.
Google results top Wall Street expectations
SAN FRANCISCO — For more than a decade, Google’s search ad business has seemed almost magical in its ability to mint money.
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European Union lawmakers voted narrowly Wednesday to force energy companies to carry out in-depth environmental audits before they deploy a technique known as “fracking” to recover natural gas from shale rock.
Cool weather, mix of sun and clouds
We will see cool but pleasant conditions in Boston as we head into the long weekend, with highs generally in the low 60s°F and lows in the low 50s°F. Overnight lows in the next two days may even dip into the upper 40s°F. Today and tomorrow, we will see some clouds and wind due to a coastal low-pressure system affecting the region from Virginia through New York and southern New England. This nor’easter will linger over the mid-Atlantic for several days.
Observers differ on fairness of election in Azerbaijan
BAKU, Azerbaijan — A prominent delegation of international election observers on Thursday sharply criticized Azerbaijan’s presidential election as unfair and rife with fraud, amid aggressive efforts by the Azerbaijani government and its allies to portray the vote as legitimate.
Abductors briefly seize Libyan prime minister
CAIRO — Libya’s prime minister, Ali Zeidan, was briefly kidnapped from a Tripoli hotel Thursday in an apparent act of retaliation for his supposed consent to the capture of a suspected al-Qaida leader by American Special Forces.
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Hundreds of women and children Wednesday protested cuts in a U.N. food-assistance program, the latest in a growing backlash by Palestinian refugees and their offspring in this forlorn coastal strip against the agency that for decades has provided them with nutrition, education and health services.
Standoff on debt has yet to rattle Asia
HONG KONG — When the U.S. government was borrowing heavily four years ago to cover costs related to the global financial crisis, Wen Jiabao, then the prime minister of China, strongly and publicly warned Washington to make sure Chinese investments in Treasury securities were safe.
UN backs peace effort in Central African Republic
The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution on Thursday aimed at stabilizing the Central African Republic, a dangerous and dysfunctional country that has descended into near-total chaos over the last half year.
Bank of England retains low interest rate
LONDON — Britain’s central bank decided on Thursday to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged at a record low in the face of more evidence that the country’s economic recovery was gaining speed.
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Three Americans won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for discovering the machinery that regulates how cells transport major molecules in a cargo system that delivers them to the right place at the right time in cells.
Libya condemns US for seizing terror suspect
TRIPOLI, Libya — Libya’s fragile interim government condemned the United States on Sunday for what it called the “kidnapping of a Libyan citizen” from this capital city a day earlier, and Libyan lawmakers threatened to remove the prime minister if the government was involved.
First black councilman can’t savor victory
Sidney Johnson — whose clandestine undercover work for the FBI helped convict five elected officials from his county for bribery — decided to try his hand at elective politics.
Airbus loosens Boeing’s US grip on Japan’s market
TOKYO — In selling planes to airlines, Boeing has long counted on the United States as its local market. Its big rival, Airbus, holds the home-field advantage in Europe. And the two compete head to head virtually everywhere else.
Boston weather inexplicably reasonable
It is now October, also known as that peculiar month when Bostonian weather somehow seems inexplicably reasonable.