Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, has pursued profits while testing local laws, and kept up questionable ties in Myanmar, Iran and Syria.

Owner of Exploded Rig Is Known for Testing Rules

New rules on filing claims for post-traumatic stress disorder could affect hundreds of thousands of war veterans.

V.A. Is Easing Rules to Cover Stress Disorder

In country after country, Facebook is cementing itself as the social networking leader.

Facebook Makes Headway Around the World

LeBron James will end the free-agent frenzy Thursday by revealing whether he will remain with the Cavaliers.

James’s Tough Call: To Leave Home Court or Not

The Democrats’ argument over fiscal policy represents the churning of a cultural fault line that has defined and destabilized the party’s politics for years.

For Democrats, Debt Debate and Familiar Ring of Disunity

Suspects in a Russian spy ring pleaded guilty, facilitating a prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States and  ending an episode that had threatened relations.

Russian Spy Suspects Plead Guilty as Part of a Swap

Retail sales rose 3.1 percent in June compared with June of last year, slightly lower than estimates compiled by Thomson Reuters.

June Sales Were Tepid at Low End and High

When officials announced the indictment of  four people in the attack, the case only turned stranger. 

Four Are Indicted in Suburban N.Y. Hotel Killing

With James Levine recuperating from surgery, other conductors have a chance to shape his programs at Tanglewood this summer.

Pinch Hitters At Tanglewood

In Lisa Cholodenko’s movie, teenagers and their two moms have dinner, and lots more, with a newly found biological father.

Meet the Sperm Donor: Modern Family Ties

“Despicable Me,” the 3-D animated feature, relies on the funny voices of TV and movie actors like Steve Carell, who plays a grumpy trying to steal the Moon.

Lunar Toons and Cookie Capers

In “Musashi,” Hisashi Inoue revisits the legendary showdown between the master swordsman Musashi and his rival Kojiro.

Turning Swords Into Slapsticks

The apartment where the opera singer Beverly Sills spent most of her life — at the Beresford on Central Park West — is on the market for nearly $7 million.

Beverly Sills’s Co-op on the Market

In her unclassifiably elaborate novel, Jennifer Egan creates a set of characters linked to the music business and lets relentless time have its way with them. 

To Their Own Beat

Some big companies have found success backing innovations; it can be a smart way to support an employee with a potential invention while sharing the risk.

New Ventures Win Old Financiers 

The Walt Disney Company is nearing a sale of its Miramax Films unit to an investor group for $600 million to $700 million, people briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.

Disney Is Said to Be Nearing a Deal for Miramax Films

Corrections

A capsule summary on Monday for an article about plans by China’s premier to maintain the country’s economic policy despite the slow recovery misspelled his name in some copies. He is Wen Jiabao, not Win Jaobao.

McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, expanded a recall of Tylenol, Motrin and Benadryl, but did not follow a customary practice.

Pill Maker Declines to Specify Size of a Recall

The author known as Eloisa James, a k a Mary Bly, and her husband have bought a $1.7 million apartment in Morningside Heights.

A Co-op Bought With ‘Eloisa Money’

Dance New Amsterdam, the large dance space in Lower Manhattan, faces possible eviction on Wednesday.

Dance New Amsterdam Faces Possible Eviction From Its Home

ABC is stripping the fake-documentary feeling out of “Detroit 1-8-7,” its coming cop drama, New York Magazine reported on Wednesday. When the series was announced in May, ABC said it would be similar to the sitcoms “The Office” and “Modern Family,” which have characters talking directly to the camera, as in a documentary. But the network recently decided to reshoot some scenes in the first episode so that there were no more nods to an imaginary camera crew. ABC was worried that the style would put distance between the characters and the audience, but real-life events also had an effect. Just days after the series was announced, The Detroit News reported that the city’s mayor, Dave Bing, had banned camera crews from riding along with police officers. The decision followed the death of a 7-year-old Detroit girl during a police raid being filmed by the A&E cable channel. “We’re trying to do a show that’s realistic,” an executive producer of the show, Jason Richman, told the magazine. “And we suddenly found ourselves with a premise that would no longer be viable.” ABC has another fake documentary this fall, a relationship drama called “My Generation.”

Coming ABC Cop Show Drops Its Documentary-Style Look

As if Betty White needed any more good news, it looks as if she’ll have enough work to stay busy to the ripe age of 89. On Wednesday, the cable channel TV Land said it was ordering a second season of “Hot in Cleveland,” its hit comedy series about a dithering N.B.A. superstar who can’t decide which multimillion-dollar offer he wants to accept  wait, scratch that: “Hot in Cleveland” stars Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick as women who move to the Rust Belt from Los Angeles, and Ms. White, above, as their saucy landlady. The debut episode of its current 10-episode season on June 16 drew 4.75 million viewers. TV Land said the second season would be 20 episodes, with production to begin in October and a premiere tentatively scheduled for January.

‘Hot in Cleveland’ Is Renewed

“The Social Network,” David Fincher’s much anticipated movie about the creation of Facebook, has been selected for opening night at the New York Film Festival, the Film Society of Lincoln Center said on Thursday. “The Social Network,” is directed by Mr. Fincher (“Zodiac,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), left, with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (“The West Wing”) adapted from Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires.” Starting in the long-ago year of 2003, it tells how the Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg (played in the film by Jesse Eisenberg) helped hatch an idea that became the wildly popular Facebook Web site  and the complications that its success quickly yielded. Scott Rudin, a producer of the film, said it was told in an “All About Eve” style, from multiple points of view, including the perspectives of other young entrepreneurs who sued Mr. Zuckerberg, saying the site was their idea. “Everybody believes they’re right,” Mr. Rudin said in a telephone interview. “But the movie leaves you to make up your own mind about what you feel about how Facebook was founded.” The film festival will have the premiere on Sept. 24, before the movie is released Oct. 1. The festival runs through Oct. 10, with additional films to be announced.

Fincher Movie About Facebook Will Open New York Film Festival

The final installment of the Bridge Project, a three-year collaboration between the Brooklyn Academy of Music and two London theatrical stalwarts, the Old Vic Theater and Sam Mendes’s Neal Street Productions, has been postponed a year, until 2012, because of scheduling issues, said Jackie Green, a press representative for the Bridge Project. The ambitious project made its debut in 2009 at the academy with Mr. Mendes directing a single cast of British and American actors in productions of Shakespeare’s “Winter’s Tale” and Chekhov’s “Cherry Orchard” that later traveled to Britain, Singapore, New Zealand, Spain, Germany and Greece. The second installment, featuring “As You Like It” and “The Tempest,” was done in Brooklyn this year. Mr. Mendes directed the productions, currently in repertory at the Old Vic, where Kevin Spacey is artistic director. The plays for the third round have not been announced, but Mr. Mendes, also a film director, has a busy schedule directing a new stage musical of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” in 2011 and “King Lear” for the Royal National Theater in 2012.

July 8, 2010

Headlines from July 8, 2010

Owner of Exploded Rig Is Known for Testing Rules

V.A. Is Easing Rules to Cover Stress Disorder

Facebook Makes Headway Around the World

James’s Tough Call: To Leave Home Court or Not

For Democrats, Debt Debate and Familiar Ring of Disunity

Billboard 200

Recovery

Thank Me Later

Can't Be Tamed

Scream

NOW 34

Historical Context for July 8, 2010