Afghanistan Snow Leopard Death: NATO Can’t Save Rare Cat

In a valley high in the Wakhan Mountains of Afghanistan, a hunter several weeks ago waded through snowdrifts to check his traps and found that he had snared one of the rarest creatures alive: a snow leopard. If a naturalist had seen the leopard, he or she would have focused on its snowy fur with black, half-moon markings and its white goatee

Insider-Trading Bust: Rajaratnam, Hedge Funds in Spotlight

On July 19, 2007, Google reported earnings that were lower than what analysts had expected, and the tech company’s stock price dropped 5% — but Raj Rajaratnam made $9 million. Allegedly, the New York hedge-fund manager had gotten a tip that Google’s earnings would be below expectations, so he was prepared with short positions and put options that would become more valuable as the stock price fell

Review: ‘Beatles: Rock Band’ fun for jamming in groups

There I was, trying to wedge a microphone under my arm while simultaneously pressing colored buttons on a plastic guitar with my left hand, strumming it with my right hand and crooning, “I want to hold your hand …” So while it’s theoretically possible, “The Beatles: Rock Band” — whose 9/9/09 release coincides with the debut of remastered versions of the Beatles catalog — should not be played alone. Besides the impracticality of multiple-instrument play without the right equipment, there is something rather lonely about attempting to play in a world-famous band by yourself.

Five great travel booking sites

The following five sites have proven the most consistently useful for the editors of Budget Travel, who do thousands of searches a year. Dohop.com Strictly for booking plane trips entirely outside of the U.S., such as a flight between Paris and Rome. The site runs simultaneous searches of multiple airports serving the same city — five airports in London, for instance — and it retrieves fares from no-frills independent carriers like EasyJet and Ryanair, which many better-known travel sites overlook.