For the past five years the University of Minnesota has been furiously trying to beat back the negative publicity generated by the violent suicide of a young man named Dan Markingson enrolled in an AstraZeneca-funded research study.

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In the end it was the publicity, police said, that led them to their man, ending the international manhunt that involved law enforcement agencies in Germany, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Canada and Thailand.

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The man who built Bain Capital and thrust the publicity-shy Boston firm on the front pages 13 years after he left has raised national awareness of a multibillion-dollar industry that reshapes world capitalism with its bold and not always successful efforts to buy, build and sell businesses.

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At the same rally, a naked man ran through the crowd, apparently as part of a publicity stunt for a website.

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