At 3:15 on a recent Friday afternoon, a 1959 green Oldsmobile was parked alongside the curb in a middle-class residential neighborhood of New York City. Two men got out, removed the license plates, and opened the hood slightly to make the car look as if it had been stolen or left alone while its owner went for help. Then they withdrew to a nearby window, where—unseen—they could watch what was to happen.Vice squad cops bent on entrapment?No. In fact, the two men were psychologists, interested ...

President Barack Obama does not like to get angry. His equanimity is his pride, and he rarely uses the bully pulpit of the Presidency for explicit criticism. But on Friday morning, Obama directed a rare showing of public pique toward the energy giant BP and the other companies involved with the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill — Transocean and Halliburton — each of which has dodged responsibility for the accident by repeatedly blaming the others, a pattern ...

On a warm Friday afternoon in June, about 50,000 boxes of toothpaste got their last squeeze inside an industrial trash compactor in Homestead, Fla. They were yanked from the shelves of discount stores and bathroom cabinets after a nationwide recall warned that the toothpaste contained a chemical, diethylene glycol, that could lead to kidney failure. Francisco Botta, who distributed the toothpaste for his family's wholesale business in Miami, stocked his warehouse bathroom with the stuff. "I used it every day," ...

Brian Ward lost his job on a Friday afternoon. Eleven days later he had a new one. With nearly 1 in 10 people out of work and the typical job search lasting 12 weeks, how did the Cleveland-based software architect pull it off? In a phrase: online social networking. Welcome to the new rules of the job hunt. Gone are the days of simply posting your rsum on CareerBuilder, e-mailing former colleagues and trolling company websites for open ...

The driver of a white Porsche zips into the Costco gas station in Marina del Rey, Calif., and takes his place in line. It's a Friday afternoon and all 16 of the pumps are taken. At $4.19 per gallon, prices there are among the least expensive on the west side of Los Angeles these days. The Porsche owner, Santa Monica attorney Matt Jones, ends up paying $56 to fill up — $15 more than it would have ...

The aftershocks of last week's overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak continued to reverberate Monday, not only in Egypt but all the way across the Middle East to Iran. And it was the democratic challenge to Iran's leaders by crowds on Tehran's streets, reported to number tens of thousands, that the Obama Administration chose to emphasize. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed U.S. support for the Iranian demonstrators: "We wish the opposition and the brave people in the ...

Had the Rev. Brian Maguire hit on the idea 30 years ago, he might have found himself facing some very annoyed congregants. Four hundred and fifty years ago, someone professing similar notions might even have been hanged. The 35-year-old pastor's brainstorm concerned a scheduling conflict on the day of the Annunciation. The holiday, which celebrates Mary's learning from the angel Gabriel that she will give birth to the Messiah, always falls on March 25, precisely nine months before Christmas. But this year the 25th is also Good Friday, when Christians ...

The murder by knife of three children, including an infant of 3 months, and both parents in a West Bank settlement late Friday night rocked Israel terribly. The news broke on Saturday morning, and the shock was somehow both muted and amplified by the enforced public silence of the Jewish Sabbath. But Shabbat ended at sundown, and freed from the strictures of enforced rest, events lurched forward with something very like vengeance. First came the condemnations. "This is ...

Let the discounting begin. Bargain-hunting shoppers turned out in droves for Black Friday markdowns, but they didn't open their pocketbooks as widely as last year, according to several retail firms tracking the data. As a result, retailers are only cautiously optimistic heading into the mainstream holiday season, including today's Cyber Monday, and experts believe that many stores will likely have to revamp promotions and discounting plans to ensure that inventories will be cleared by Christmas. Already, ...

Preliminary data indicates Black Friday sales got off to a roaring start this year, with consumers shopping earlier and online sales increasing significantly over last year. Retailers across the board reported strong crowds early Friday, with high-definition televisions, laptops, winter coats and the popular toy Zhu-Zhu pets among the hottest items. "There were bargain-hungry shoppers out there, and retailers really did pull out all the stops for people," says Kathy Grannis, a spokesperson for the National Retail Federation, ...