Ten Words from Today's NY Times - Feb. 6, 2013

As the five men stood arguing by a cluster of palm trees, a volley of remotely operated American missiles shot down from the night sky and incinerated them all, along with a camel that was tied up nearby.

The killing of Mr. Jaber, just the kind of leader most crucial to American efforts to eradicate Al Qaeda, was a reminder of the inherent hazards of the quasi-secret campaign of targeted killings that the United States is waging against suspected militants not just in Yemen but also in Pakistan and Somalia.

From his basement office in the White House, Mr. Brennan has served as the principal coordinator of a “kill list” of Qaeda operatives marked for death, overseeing drone strikes by the military and the C.I.A., and advising Mr. Obama on which strikes he should approve.

But the clandestine war will receive a rare moment of public scrutiny on Thursday, when its chief architect, John O. Brennan, the White House counterterrorism adviser, faces a Senate confirmation hearing as President Obama’s nominee for C.I.A. director.

That continues a remarkable acceleration over the past two years in a program that has carried out at least 63 airstrikes since 2009, according to The Long War Journal, a Web site that collects public data on the strikes, with an estimated death toll in the hundreds.

In a series of e-mails, tensions appeared to be escalating inside the firm's headquarters in Lower Manhattan as it publicly professed that its ratings were valid, even as the home loans bundled into mortgage-backed securities, or M.B.S., were failing at accelerating rates.

S.& P. said prosecutors cherry-picked e-mails and that it would vigorously defend itself from "these unwarranted claims."

"What we don't know yet is, what's the other stuff that could be out there?" he added, noting that the vast body of internal documents might also contain exculpatory material for S.& P.

“The thing that slightly depresses me is the resulting and consequent lack of brave, new work appearing seasonably on the Broadway stages,” said Jack O’Brien, a Tony-winning director of plays and musicals.

The women most mentioned are Julia Roberts and Ms. Johansson, who won a supporting-actress Tony in 2010 for her Broadway debut in Arthur Miller’s “View From the Bridge,” which Mr. Thompson also produced.