Carlos Slim.Photo: Getty Images Right around the time the New York Times Company was set to pay back its $250 million debt to Carlos Slim, the Mexican super-billionaire took advantage of August's market slump to buy up 553,000 shares in the media company. (He also bought 621,000 shares of Saks Fifth Avenue, shelling out a total of $8.8 million.) The Times Co.'s stock jumped 13 cents shortly after... more.

If there were a Nobel Prize for awesome chapeaux, they might win that, too.Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images The Committee awarded this year's prize to President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, her countrywoman and peace activist Leymah Gbowee, and Yemeni journalist–democracy advocate Tawakul Karman. Especially after a year of such tumult in that part of the world, the selection of th... more.

These guys, always with the phones.Photo: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images In addition to the ongoing phone-hacking scandal and subsequent lawsuits at News Corp., the company's News International division remains under investigation for bribing police officers in the United Kingdom. As a gesture toward not being a crooked company, employees are now being encouraged to call a new "alertl... more.

Where to next?Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images As the news of Steve Jobs' death begins to settle in, many are starting to turn their heads and peek at what Apple's future (both immediate and distant) might look like. The consensus: like a TV! Yet others have a different opinion: not like a TV! And while those are both reasonable points, nobody can say for certain how the next few years of th... more.

Ron Paul speaking to the Values Voter Summit today.Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images Around 3,000 people took part in the Values Voter Summit Straw Poll today and the results more or less confirm the absolute uselessness of these political exercises. Ron Paul, not exactly the most socially conservative person in the race—in fact, quite the opposite—trounced the rest of the field... more.

Ron Adams.Photo: Dan Amira Literally the last thing you expect to see at the Values Voter Summit, the annual gathering of religious conservatives, is a dude wearing an atheism t-shirt. So when I spotted Ron Adams, I had to ask him what the hell — or, I guess, what the empty nothingness — was going on. "I wanted to see this up close," he told me. "It was almost like watching a car crash ... more.

Union activists join protests Wednesday.Photo: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images In less than half an hour, the organizers of the Occupy Wall Street protests, now approaching their fourth week and picking up steam, plan to expand their operation further uptown. The target of today's (unauthorized) rally: Washington Square Park. But this may be more than just another publicity event. Better known perhap... more.

Hey partisans — sit on it!Photo: Reason My item about the Occupy Wall Street movement has raised the hackles of Reason editor Matt Welch, who replies by accusing me of partisanship. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Reason magazine's writers, it’s that they think I’m "partisan." Last year ReasonTv editor and leather jacket fetishist Nick Gillespie called me an ... more.

Police detain a protestor on Monday.Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images Occupy Wall Street is nineteen days into its protests, and counting. Today might be its biggest day yet. The police have taken an aggressive approach to crowd controls — more than 700 arrests last weekend alone — and that doesn't come cheap. There's no accounting quite yet, but WNYC reports that the department has had... more.

Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images Today, Occupy Wall Street protestors will be joined by members of several major unions: New York State United Teachers, Service Employees International Union, and the Transport Workers Union. They'll stage a march at 4:30 p.m. today, and organizers estimate it will be the biggest crowd of protestors to date, perhaps drawing between 3,000–5,000 people.... more.

Are you ready for some half-hearted apologies?Photo: Mike Jachles/Splash News After thinking things over, country music star Hank Williams Jr. has decided that he shouldn't have said that John Boehner playing golf with President Obama was akin to Benjamin Netanyahu playing golf with Adolf Hitler. On his website yesterday, Williams penned a brief apology. He capitalized random words, just like our... more.

Another newspaper.Photo: iStockphoto WSJ writer Jessica Firger spoke to Jed Brandt and Michael Levitin, the activists behind the unofficial newspaper of Zuccotti Park. The four-page OWSJ kicked off with a (semi-recycled) print run of 50,000 on Saturday: The Occupied Wall Street Journal appears less concerned with traditional reporting than with firing up protesters and explaining the day-to-day o... more.

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images With her campaign looking less and less robust by the day, Michele Bachmann did not do much to reassure her supporters on Tuesday. The congresswoman was scheduled to give a fund-raising speech in the hayloft of an Iowa pumpkin farm, but she abruptly canceled the talk when a few dozen local Campus Democrats showed up to wave signs ("John Wayne Quincy Adams — O... more.

Discretion is for the weak.Photo: Jimi Celeste/PatrickMcMullan.com The Fox News chairman seems to have reached that point in his life where he's too rich, powerful, and old to care about what he says anymore. Here is Ailes on his decision to hire Sarah Palin: "I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings." But don't worry, Megyn Kelly! He hired you because he respects your journalistic... more.

Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images After four years in prison, the very recently freed 24-year-old left Perugia, Italy, for her hometown of Seattle on Tuesday. Upon her arrival at Sea-Tac Airport, Knox gave a brief press conference in which she described herself as "really overwhelmed" before tearfully thanking her supporters. She said she was particularly grateful to her family who, as she explained... more.

Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images Republican moneymen and pundits are starting to flock to the Mitt Romney banner, sending forth the word that it is time to bow to the inevitable. But the Republican voters just do not like Mitt Romney. The depth the of the base's resistance to falling in behind next-in-line Romney has continuously shocked observers, resulting first in the rise of Donald Trump, then ... more.

Photo: Eric Michael Johnson for The New York Times So how did today's City Council meeting, held in light of recent reports alleging that the NYPD spied on pretty much every single Muslim in New York, go? Not well — especially for police commissioners named Ray Kelly. Faced with intense questioning and heated accusations, Kelly was largely unsuccessful in his attempts to assuage the Council... more.

The Egyptian sheik Reda Shata was not pleased to find out that he was a target of the NYPD's surveillance of local Muslims in the years after September 11, even as he was inviting intelligence officers to his place of worship: Shata welcomed FBI agents to his mosque to speak to Muslims, invited NYPD officers for breakfast and threw parties for officers who were leaving the precinct during his ti... more.

Photo: iStockphoto To get an idea of what kind of guy George Bardwil is, it's important to know that in 2009 he pleaded guilty to beating his maid with a metal ashtray and was sentenced to three years probation. In the course of that investigation he lost his $187,000 belt buckle. Back in the news today, Bardwil says that, on Monday afternoon, he was tied up and robbed of $300,000 worth of jewel... more.

Apple's homepage on Wednesday.Photo: Apple The immediate reaction to the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs has been massive and somewhat overwhelming. Obviously, much more will be said about Jobs's legacy, but here is a limited compilation some of the most notable and interesting tributes paid so far: Barack Obama: "The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to SteveR... more.