News

The director for security for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee announced today that protests would be allowed in specially designated areas in several parks in Beijing during the Olympics. According to BOCOG: “During the Olympics, in order to ensure a smooth...

Dan Rather has always been about as tightly wound as a coot in a chicken coop, but during a recent MSNBC appearance, his brain appeared to be about as dependable as a Times Square Rolex. For all those who miss the Danisms from the days when he was on the air and in...

Rick Perlstein's Nixonland hit British bookstores earlier this month, and at the London Telegraph Dominic Sandbrook, of Oxford's history faculty and the author of well-received books on Eugene McCarthy and England in the Swinging Sixties, reviews it. His assessment...

Navy Adm. Timothy J. Keating, commander of U.S. Pacific Command said yesterday that he and his Chinese counterpart had agreed to conduct two bilateral humanitarian assistance and disaster response exercises. According to the Department of Defense: Keating said he and...

The recent 2008 Major League Baseball All Star Game-and-a-half showcased not only the game’s current best and greats from yesteryear; it also starred a structure.  The venue was the message.  As Yankee Stadium brings athletes and fans through its gates as part of a...

Few people were better liked in Washington, and for good reason, than former White House press spokesperson Tony Snow, who died last week at age 53, so it's no surprise that this morning President Bush, Karl Rove, and other figures from the political, social, and...

At Paper Cuts, the blog of the New York Times Book Review, Mick Sussman describes what happened when he went to Amazon.com recently seeking a copy of Rick Perlstein's study of the Goldwater campaign of 1964, Before The Storm. Sussman, who wanted to read that book...

Last week, I was the guest on a Chinese language TV show produced by Voice of America and broadcast live in China. Chinese callers are given a toll free number in China they can call to pose questions. The topic of discussion was “non-traditional security threats to...

What do the Chinese do when the dollar drops and the RMB rises? shopping! Air China announced today that it will purchase 45 planes from Boeing with a book value of $6.3 billion. The RMB has risen 6.65 percent against the dollar so far this year, and about 20 percent...

Ever since real-estate mogul Sam Zell gained control of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Baltimore Sun, these newspapers have seen one staff cutback and executive shakeup after another. Yesterday was no exception, as David Hiller, publisher of the Times,...