Peter Munk, 92, Dies; Built World’s Biggest Gold Mining Company

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Supported by Obituaries Peter Munk, 92, Dies; Built World’s Biggest Gold Mining Company Photo Peter Munk prepared to speak at the Barrick gold mining company's annual shareholders meeting in 2014 in Toronto. Credit Mark Blinch/Reuters Peter Munk, the Canadian who built the world’s largest gold-mining company, years after suffering one of his country’s most notable business failures, died on Wednesday in Toronto. He was 90.
Barrick Gold, the company he founded, announced the death but did not give a cause. Mr. Munk wore a pacemaker and had dealt with heart problems for several years.
An outsider in Canada — his preference for fedoras alone set him apart — and a former escapee from Nazi-occupied Hungary, Mr. Munk initially tried out several different lines of business, including stereo equipment and resorts in Fuji. Not all were successful, but he never appeared deterred by his failures.
Barrick itself started out as an oil company that endured three years of losses. Then Mr. M..

Facebook Employees in an Uproar Over Executive’s Leaked Memo

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Supported by Technology Facebook Employees in an Uproar Over Executive’s Leaked Memo Photo Facebook’s headquarters in London. Fallout at the Silicon Valley company over a leaked memo has been wide and comes at a time of intense scrutiny. Credit Daniel Leal-Olivas/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook employees were in an uproar on Friday over a leaked 2016 memo from a top executive defending the social network’s growth at any cost — even if it caused deaths from a terrorist attack that was organized on the platform.
In the memo, Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook vice president, wrote, “Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good.”
Mr. Bosworth and Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, have since disavowed the memo, which was published on Thursday by BuzzFeed New..

‘Roseanne’ Is Here to Stay: ABC Renews Highly Rated Reboot

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Supported by Media ‘Roseanne’ Is Here to Stay: ABC Renews Highly Rated Reboot Photo From left, Michael Fishman, Jayden Rey, Ames McNamara, John Goodman, Roseanne Barr and Sara Gilbert in a scene from the new season of “Roseanne.” Credit Adam Rose/ABC “Roseanne” is going to be here for a while.
Three days removed from its blockbuster premiere, ABC said on Friday that it would bring back the revived sitcom for another season.
After “Roseanne” drew 18.2 million viewers and a mighty 5.1 rating among adults under 50 on Tuesday, a renewal was all but inevitable. Roseanne Barr, the show’s co-creator and star, had previously said she wanted to do another season.
And when networks find something that works these days, they are quick to lock it down. NBC renewed its reboot of “Will & Grace” to a second season before the show premiered in September. Earlier this month, it renewed the old sitcom for a third go-round, keeping the show alive until 2020.
“Will & Grace” drew more than 10 million ..

Built to Flood: Brutal Choice in Houston: Sell Home at a Loss or Face New Floods

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| Built to Flood
Brutal Choice in Houston: Sell Home at a Loss or Face New Floods

KATY, Tex. — When Hurricane Harvey struck Houston, floodwaters swept through Eileen and Jeff Swanson’s two-story brick home, blanketing the first floor in muck and nearly destroying a domestic existence 12 years in the making. Their china cabinet, in the family for three generations, was reduced to a sodden mess. A couch, once a soft red, had blushed into a watery burgundy; the carpet squished like grass at the bottom of a marsh. A dirty foot-high water line ran wall to wall, marking the local crest of an event that the National Weather Service called “the most significant tropical cyclone rainfall event in United States history.”
After the floodwaters receded, the Swansons returned to a house ravaged, endless questions, few answers — and a looming decision.
They are not alone. Hundreds of homeowners in Canyon Gate at Cinco Ranch, a quiet subdivision in a west Houston suburb, a..

Andrew Balducci, Who Turned a Market Into a Food Mecca, Dies at 92

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Supported by Obituaries Andrew Balducci, Who Turned a Market Into a Food Mecca, Dies at 92 Photo Andrew Balducci in the store Balducci’s in Greenwich Village in an undated photograph. He was the driving force behind the expansion of business from a Brooklyn pushcart to a dominant epicurean emporium. Credit The Balducci family Long before the New York food emporiums Fairway, Citarella, Dean & Deluca, Grace’s Marketplace and Eataly, there was Balducci’s.
It began a century ago as a rented pushcart in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, operated by Louis Balducci, an immigrant from southeastern Italy. But it began growing thanks to his son Andrew, who, on his return from World War II, persuaded his father to leave the pushcart behind and move across the East River to open a modest sidewalk greengrocery in Greenwich Village.
Soon Andy, as everyone called him, had even bigger ambitions for the business.
“I always thought the store should be a little more sophisticated,” he told The New York Times in..

Your Money Adviser: With New Tax Law, I.R.S. Urges Taxpayers to Review Withholdings

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Supported by Business Day With New Tax Law, I.R.S. Urges Taxpayers to Review Withholdings Photo You can adjust the amount of money withheld from your paycheck by filling out a W-4 form and submitting it to your employer. Credit Barbara Woike/Associated Press The Internal Revenue Service is urging taxpayers to do a “paycheck checkup” to make sure they are having their employers withhold the correct amount of taxes.
It’s generally advisable to check your withholding from year to year, or when you have a significant life change, like getting married or divorced. But it’s especially important this year, the I.R.S. said, given changes in the tax code after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was approved last year.
The law changed tax rates and brackets and limited or ended certain deductions. It also increased the standard deduction, which reduces your taxable income without your having to itemize deductions on your return. In addition, the law removed personal exemptions and increased the chil..

Vocations: Fighting Disease is a Battle Often Won With Spreadsheets

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Supported by Business Day Fighting Disease is a Battle Often Won With Spreadsheets Photo Christina Tan, the New Jersey State epidemiologist, says it’s critical to maintain vigilance in monitoring for flu and other infections and respond flexibly to emerging disease trends.
Credit Bryan Anselm for The New York Times Christina Tan, 48, is the state epidemiologist at the New Jersey Department of Health in Trenton.
What is your role in protecting people’s health?
The main function is to track and monitor both common and unusual diseases in the state, and characterize their distribution. We provide our data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention so they can compile national pictures of disease trends and problems, whether from infectious diseases or cancer. We also work to prevent recurrences.
What’s your background?
I’m a doctor of internal medicine and also completed a fellowship related to my current position.
During medical school at what is now the Icahn School of Med..

Economic View: How to Think About Corporate Tax Cuts

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Supported by Business Day How to Think About Corporate Tax Cuts Photo Credit Andrew Roberts Corporate tax cuts will put billions of dollars back in the hands of businesses this year. Naturally, people want to know how those businesses will spend it. But the answer doesn’t really matter, at least not for understanding whether the tax cuts were a good idea.
That’s because the economic case for corporate tax cuts has almost nothing to do with what corporations do with the extra cash.
Economists generally recognize that corporate tax cuts have two quite distinct effects.
First, a tax cut increases the incentive to invest. A lower corporate tax rate gives investors in a new factory a larger share of the income that factory generates. And that in turn leads more investment projects to pass the cost-benefit test that tells a company whether it’s worth building the factory in the first place.
This incentive effect drives most economic models of investment, and few economists debate its un..

Wealth Matters: Want to Keep Your Wine Collection Safe? Store It in a Bomb Shelter

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Supported by Your Money Want to Keep Your Wine Collection Safe? Store It in a Bomb Shelter James D. Wallick has thousands of bottles of wine spread over several locations.
He keeps about 400 bottles in his apartment on the Upper West Side of New York. Most are ready to drink, but some are waiting to be transported by climate-controlled van to a storage facility in Jersey City, where they’ll age in a temperature-controlled environment.
The storage facility, Mana Wine Storage, keeps 2,000 to 3,000 of bottles of wines for Mr. Wallick at any one time. These include bottles he stores for the New York chapter of the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, an international food and wine club. He is the chapter’s president.
Mr. Wallick has a third storage spot: a wine cellar in his weekend home in Bridgehampton, on Long Island, that holds 5,000 bottles. It is more or less full, he said.
Why does he spread his wine out in so many places? Logistics, primarily, but also convenience, he said.
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