Favorite Reads

Slate V: I Just Walked Across America

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:59:00 -0800

In this episode of Interviews 50 Cents with Alex Chadwick, we meet Hakim, an Algerian man who just walked across the United States with nothing but $217 and a backpack. Even in the post-9/11 world, Hakim says American hospitality is alive and well.

Rockets fired from Lebanon as the Red Cross accuses Israel of neglecting the wounded.

Daniel Politi — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:36:09 -0800

Early morning reports reveal that at least three rockets fired from southern Lebanon exploded in northern Israel today. Israel fired back in what a spokesman called "a pinpoint response." Israeli officials had said they were prepared to deal with an attack from Lebanon since it began its incursion into the Gaza Strip, raises the possibility that the violence could spread and open a second front for Israel. No one has claimed responsibility and the Lebanese government condemned the attack. The Washington Post leads with a local story that looks at street closings planned for Inauguration Day and off-leads the Red Cross accusing Israel of neglecting the wounded in Gaza and preventing ambulances from reaching a devastated area, where rescue workers found at least 15 bodies and several emaciated children yesterday. The Post includes early word of the rockets fired on northern Israel in its story and notes they were the first fired into Israel since the 2006 war with Hezbollah.

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India's Bernie Madoff.

Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:28:33 -0800

A summary of what's in the major publications.

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Can a Shiite self-mutilate any way he wants on Ashura?

Brian Palmer — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:58:56 -0800

Thousands of Shiites marched in Karbala, Iraq, on Tuesday to mark the Muslim holiday of Ashura. According to a report in Reuters, men "cut their scalps with daggers and whipped their backs with chains." Can a Shiite self-mutilate any way he wants?

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Debating the best movies of 2008.

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:32:54 -0800

Stop harshing on Revolutionary Road.

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What happened to all those Democrats for McCain?

Christopher Beam — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:07:43 -0800

When Joe Lieberman returned to the Senate after Election Day, the question among many Democrats was not whether he would be punished but how. Some colleagues thought he should be stripped of his committee chairmanships. Others advocated booting him from the caucus entirely. Bloggers on the left all but proposed that he be tarred and feathered, live on C-SPAN. Ultimately, Lieberman got off with a slap on the wrist.

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What is the most disloyal dog breed? The Explainer's 2008 Question of the Year.

Daniel Engber — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:21:49 -0800

Three weeks ago, the Explainer released the annual list of questions we were either unable or unwilling to answer in 2008. Among this year's entries were brainteasers like "Why do women like soup?" and "If someone with DNA from the Stone Age were born today, would they be normal?" In keeping with Slate tradition, we then asked readers to vote for the unanswered question that most deserved a response.

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Bill James urges his colleagues to boycott the BCS.

Bill James — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:24:20 -0800

Suppose that you are a football coach and you are having an interview with an athletic director. "Vince," says the AD—in our fantasy your name is Vince, because you are a football coach—"this is a great opportunity for a young coach. The Mountain West Conference is an up-and-coming league with a bright future. We're offering to increase your salary almost a full 10 percent over what you're making as an assistant in the SEC, and we've got a four-year-old Honda you can drive anytime you need it. We've just got a couple of special requirements for you."

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I Just Walked Across America

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:37:39 -0800

A daily video from Slate V.

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Voluntary Madness doesn't have a new prescription for psychiatric treatment.

Leonard Groopman — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:11:23 -0800

A century ago, Clifford Beers published A Mind That Found Itself, an autobiographical account of his mental illness and of the abusive treatment of the hospitalized insane. Hailed by pre-eminent psychologist William James, Beers' landmark book sparked a social movement for the reform of insane asylums and led to the founding of the first American outpatient psychiatric clinic, creating an alternative to incarceration for the mentally ill. Psychiatry, psychiatrists, and psychiatric hospitalization have come under scrutiny many times since then, most notably in the 1960s and early 1970s in such works as Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Thomas Szasz's The Myth of Mental Illness, Erving Goffman's Asylums, and David Rosenhan's "On Being Sane in Insane Places." Mental illness, it was argued, was not a medical disturbance like physical illness but a social construction that enabled society to control deviant behavior by labeling it as pathology and sequestering it. (Szasz also argued that it was a means of evading individual moral responsibility.) The movement for deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill—which contributed to the increase in homelessness among people labeled by psychiatrists as sick—took inspiration from such critiques. More recently, Susannah Kaysen's story of her adolescent hospitalization, Girl, Interrupted, which also became a popular film, reprised the earlier themes in the tradition.

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Inside the Holocaust archives.

Sarah Wildman — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:10:34 -0800

BERLIN—Aubrey Pomerance is a permanent expat. A Canadian, he has lived in Germany for 25 years—seven of those as the chief archivist at the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Daniel Libeskind architectural marvel in the center of the city. Pomerance urges me to consider donating Valy's letters to the museum. When I mention that her story is frustratingly incomplete, he waves a hand. "Be careful when you say incomplete," he says. "There is no collection that documents a person's life from moment of birth to moment of death. But you can cull a lot of information from one single document." It is also very useful, I am discovering, to show them to readers who are particularly well-versed in women of the period and who know Berlin.

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Israeli leaders are weighing an Egyptian-led cease-fire initiative.

Daniel Politi — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:04:47 -0800

The Wall Street Journal leads its world-wide newsbox with the Israeli mortar shells that were fired at a UN-run school in the Gaza Strip that killed around 30 or 40 Palestinians. Many Palestinians have been seeking refuge at these UN facilities and many of those killed were women and children. As the Palestinian death toll reached 640, Israeli, European, and American officials expressed support for an Egyptian-led initiative to broker a cease-fire. The Washington Post leads with, and the Los Angeles Times devotes its top non-local story to, the fallout from President-elect Barack Obama's choice of Leon Panetta as CIA director. Current and former intelligence officials are angry about the selection of someone with scant intelligence experience, and Democratic lawmakers on the intelligence committee remain resentful that they weren't consulted about the choice before it was leaked to the press.

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Sanjay Gupta is a sweet choice for surgeon general.

Troy Patterson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:04:27 -0800

It is a measure of TV journalism's unhealthy self-regard that Wolf Blitzer launched today's edition of The Situation Room (CNN) with a story that one of his colleagues, chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, might have a new job.

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Missing Steve Jobs at Macworld.

Farhad Manjoo — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:18:52 -0800

Just before the holidays, Apple announced that CEO Steve Jobs would not deliver the keynote address at Macworld, the annual conference that he's long used as a platform for his flashiest product announcements. The company's terse press release made Apple-watchers suspicious about the company's motives. Jobs, a cancer survivor, hasn't looked great lately—he's skinny, his voice sounds thin, and at recent events he has, uncharacteristically, given much of the stage time to subordinates. Last week, an anonymous source told Gizmodo that Jobs' health was "rapidly declining," and that the Macworld pull-out was Apple's way of reducing his presence at the company—preparation, the source implied, for Jobs' imminent death. In response, Jobs posted a letter claiming that he was suffering from a hormone imbalance, and that doctors expected a full recovery within a few months' time. For now, Jobs remains CEO, which is fortunate for all involved: On Tuesday, we got a glimpse of what Apple would look like without him, and it wasn't good.

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When politicians declare war on something, it's not usually a good sign.

John Dickerson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:26:41 -0800

Jonathan Martin of Politico reports that Joe Biden declared "we're at war," when talking about the current economic crisis with a group of congressional leaders yesterday. Biden's spokeswoman said that the vice president-elect was making the case that passing the stimulus bill will require members of Congress to join in the same spirit of cooperation that reigned just after the 9/11 attacks.

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How many albinos are there in Tanzania?

Juliet Lapidos — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:20:42 -0800

Three men armed with machetes killed an 8-year-old albino boy in Burundi last week and are believed to have smuggled his limbs to Tanzania, where witch doctors use albino body parts for potions. At least 35 albinos were killed in Tanzania in 2008, prompting police officials to set up an emergency hot line and a program to distribute free cell phones to all albinos. How many albinos are there in Tanzania?

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The FDIC sells failed IndyMac Bank too soon—and for too little.

Daniel Gross — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:10:47 -0800

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Monday agreed to sell IndyMac, a failed bank it took over last July, to a group of sharp Wall Street operators. They're paying about $15 billion, leaving the FDIC with a loss of about $9 billion on the bank. The government will probably be glad to get rid of IndyMac after just eight months, as it would like to unload all the other failed companies and bad assets the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve has amassed. But there's reason to think they should wait awhile before selling.

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Why Obama picked Panetta to run the CIA.

Fred Kaplan — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:54:36 -0800

The puzzler of the hour: Why is Barack Obama picking Leon Panetta, a former congressman and White House official with no intelligence experience, to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency?

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Obama's Department of Justice.

Judith Resnik — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:44:13 -0800

The Obama administration is taking over the Department of Justice with a distinguished roster of top appointments—Elena Kagan as solicitor general, David Ogden as deputy attorney general, and Dawn Johnsen (a Slate contributor) to head the Office of Legal Counsel. Now that we know who will help attorney general nominee Eric Holder lead the department, it's time to think about priorities. One focus is whether the new DoJ will reverse course on the Guantanamo detainees, whom lawyers for the Bush administration did their utmost to keep out of court.

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What's new in Wired, TheNew Yorker, and Reason.

Kara Hadge — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:59:10 -0800

Newsweek, Jan. 12The cover story "underscores the stubborn, maddening fact about the Israeli-Palestinian relationship: there is only one path to peace, and both sides know what it is—and yet neither side has been willing to take it." Israel would accept only "a comprehensive agreement that creates two sovereign states, Israel and Palestine, warily coexisting side by side." But there are numerous and complex questions in any compromise, including "the exact borders of a two-state compromise; the fate of Palestinian refugees; [and] the future of Jerusalem." … An article suggests that wary socially liberal Americans "can rest easy" when they watch the Rev. Rick Warren, an evangelical, deliver the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration because "Warren is not Billy Graham." Graham, though, is just the kind of evangelical Obama could use right now, one who believes "that there are mysteries neither a pastor nor a president can fully comprehend."

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A Cartoonish 2008

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:44:38 -0800

A daily video from Slate V.

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A photographer in Gaza.

Scout Tufankjian — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:52:07 -0800

Israel's offensive in Gaza entered its 11th day on Tuesday as the death toll mounted. Several weeks into the 2006 conflict in the region, photographer Scout Tufankjian filed photos and an essay from Gaza on how to take photographs of war. Tufankjian, who had been working in Gaza on and off for about three years, wrote at the time that "the situation now is as bad as I have seen it." His dispatch is reprinted below.

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Obama appointee Dawn Johnsen's collected writings for Slate.

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:55:39 -0800

Yesterday morning, Barack Obama announced several high-level appointments to the new Justice Department, including Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel, the little-known branch of the DoJ considered "the president's law firm." Johnsen teaches law at Indiana University but has also been a prolific blogger for Slate's legal blog "Convictions," and a Slate contributor. (Read Johnsen's self-introduction on "Convictions" here.) Recycled below are her articles and some highlights from her "Convictions" postings, including her thoughts on how that office should be reformed.

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Green my blog.

Jacob Leibenluft — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:44:01 -0800

I have a blog. It's just something for my friends and families, but I imagine it still sucks up a lot of energy. After all, Web sites have to bounce around servers and computers all over the place. I've seen some blogs with tickers to calculate their carbon footprint. Should I be concerned about mine?

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Software, soldiers, and the future of ghosts.

William Saletan — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:30:49 -0800

Don't be frightened, but ghosts are about to become real.

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test

John Dickerson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:42:24 -0800

Washington officials can't say for sure how many people are coming to town for Barack Obama's inauguration. Estimates have ranged from 2 million to 4 million. Perhaps the confusion lies in figuring out how many are coming to see his swearing-in and how many are lining up to get their share of the coming stimulus package.

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How you (and Lincoln, FDR, and JFK) can help write this year's inaugural address.

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:24:38 -0800

If you've ever wanted to be a presidential speechwriter, now's your chance: Click here to collaborate with Washington, Lincoln, and JFK—as well as other Slate readers—to write this year's inaugural address. Created in partnership with MixedInk, this feature is called "The People's Inaugural Address," but even the title itself is open to change.

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"The Unwritten History of Prose"

T.R. Hummer — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:22:10 -0800

Click the arrow on the audio player to hear T.R. Hummer read this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes.

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Obama surprises intelligence community by selecting Leon Panetta to be the head of the CIA.

Daniel Politi — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:42:50 -0800

The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today lead with President-elect Barack Obama's surprise choice of Leon Panetta to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. By picking the former congressman and chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, Obama immediately raised the ire of many who were quick to question why someone with scant intelligence experience would be tapped to lead the agency. The selection will apparently be formally announced within the next few days. The Wall Street Journal leads its worldwide newsbox with Israel vowing to continue with its military operation in the Gaza Strip even as European leaders intensified their calls for a cease-fire.

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How the newspaper industry tried to invent the Web but failed.

Jack Shafer — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:13:47 -0800

A moment of sympathy, please, for newspapers, whose readers and advertisers have been fleeing at a frightening rate.

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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a war, and it won't be over until someone wins.

Anne Applebaum — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:55:02 -0800

Circumstances change, and so do the names of the leading players. Peace negotiators come and go, and so do the details of their agreements. But in the end, there is one aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that always remains the same: When all else has failed, you can be absolutely sure that someone, somewhere, will issue a statement calling for peace.

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What's going to happen to the Minnesota and Illinois Senate seats?

Nina Shen Rastogi — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:46:32 -0800

The first session of the 111th Congress will convene in Washington on Tuesday. Several dozen freshman senators will be seated in tomorrow's swearing-in ceremony, but seats in two states—Minnesota and Illinois—remain contested. (Three more senators—Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden, and Ken Salazar—will soon leave their positions for the Obama administration.) What's going to happen with the empty seats?

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The Obama stimulus package should be spent on transformative investments, not bridges and roads.

Eliot Spitzer — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:09:14 -0800

The incoming Obama administration and Congress are planning a huge fiscal stimulus package. They hope that such a stimulus will catalyze an economic turnaround and be a cornerstone of a "New New Deal." If the early reports are reliable, the stimulus will include a huge tax cut and will fund projects like road-building and bridge repair, laying the infrastructure foundation for the economy of the future.

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Homeland Security USA reviewed.

Troy Patterson — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:03:43 -0800

On the bright side, the new reality show about the Department of Homeland Security is not a game show. Though the world of 2009 is, as the existence of this program confirms, an absurd place, there are still some limits. For now we can only daydream about a Survivor-style competition in which civilians struggle with paperwork marathons and loose-nuke challenges in vying to become, say, director of FEMA. Nor is this show the exercise in fishbowl living that a hard-bitten voyeur might hope to peep—The Real Big Brother World or some such, where after a sweaty night of lassoing illegals, a Border Patrol agent lopes back to the hot tub to help a debauched air marshal practice her frisking skills. And you'd have to be right off the boat to think that producers granted "unprecedented access" to DHS would explore controversy, corruption, or mismanagement.

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Gaza could have been a model of the future Palestinian state.

Christopher Hitchens — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:07:59 -0800

The deaths of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, and of Israelis (Muslim and Christian Arab, and Druse and Bedouin, as well as Jewish, don't forget, in Ashdod and Sderot), are hardly ennobled by the sordid realization that the timing of the carnage has been determined by three sets of electoral calculation.

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Dear Prudence: Reluctant Fiance

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:28:06 -0800

A daily video from Slate V.

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Everyman edition of Richard Yates.

Blake Bailey — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:05:20 -0800

The film adaptation of Richard Yates' first and most famous novel, Revolutionary Road, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, is a remarkably faithful treatment of the book, which—in case you've missed the buzz—is about an attractive young couple who are discontented with 1950s suburban life and come to a bad end. The novel was published in 1961, and almost 50 years later many seem tempted to read Betty Friedan-style discontentment into it, viewing Winslet's character, April Wheeler, as a kind of proto-feminist. It is she, after all, who has the idea to chuck everything and move to Paris while her husband Frank loses his nerve and decides that the "hopeless emptiness" of Eisenhower America isn't so bad.

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Photos of Obama's Secret Service detail.

Scout Tufankjian — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:03:54 -0800

Photos of the president-elect's Secret Service detail.

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Israeli forces go deeper into Gaza but stay away from major urban centers.

Daniel Politi — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 06:57:25 -0800

The Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox lead with Israeli troops and tanks pushing deeper into the Gaza Strip as the ground invasion continues with no end in sight. Under heavy protection from air and naval power, Israeli soldiers surrounded Gaza's main city and essentially cut the Strip in half. For their part, Hamas militants continued to fire rockets into Israel. As the Palestinian death toll passed the 500 mark, there were mounting international calls for a cease-fire but an Israeli military official warned that the offensive would not end "in hours or a few days."

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Israel sends ground troops into Gaza; Congress wrangles over Obama's stimulus bill.

Barron YoungSmith — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 08:00:10 -0800

The Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times all lead with Israel's dramatic decision to send ground troops, tanks, and artillery into Gaza yesterday evening. After eight days of airstrikes, Israel says the invasion is necessary to dismember Hamas's rocket-launch infrastructure (and, some of the papers speculate, to overthrow the terrorist group)--a task that "will not be easy or short."

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A Fray Editor bids farewell

Geoffrey Andersen — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:35:38 -0800

Last week's poetry selection from Robert Pinsky cast our readers upon the winter landscape of the English countryside with Thomas Hardy's "The Darkling Thrush." In his introduction, Pinsky argues that this elegiac piece of light verse may serve us well in this moment of transition, expressing our world-weary and half-futile effort to project hope upon the bleakest of landscapes. Professional poets, amateur wordsmiths, and appreciative readers came out to fling their souls upon the Poetry Fray, joining Pinsky in a remarkable discussion of the poem's theme, structure and technique. I found the ensuing talk of transitions and thresholds especially poignant as I listened in and searched for the words to use in this, my final, Fraywatch column.

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Palm Beach's ultrarich say Madoff's name, and then spit.

Daniel Gross — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 07:59:44 -0800

Palm beach is ground zero of the Madoff affair. The posh sliver of land is home to a high concentration of those bilked by the brazen, alleged Ponzi artist. Bernard Madoff maintained a 8,700-square-foot mansion north of town and prospected for marks at the exclusive Palm Beach Country Club, where he was a member. I spent last week in the area—hardship duty, I know—and it left me thinking that this is as much an anthropological story as it is a financial one. Madoff was able to separate so many smart-money types from their hard-earned cash by fiendishly exploiting the unique, clubby culture of Palm Beach—and of the global jet set that congregates there.

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Obama faces tough call on al-Marri; the contest to rule the RNC heats up.

Morgan Smith — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 07:56:28 -0800

The New York Times leads with expectations for the Obama administration's upcoming Supreme Court brief on the legal status of a Guantanamo detainee. The document is the new president's first occasion to disavow the Bush administration's expansive use of executive power, but some legal scholars believe the dangerous nature the detainee in question and the lack of admissible evidence against him could force the Obama camp to disappoint those hoping for a vigorous renunciation of Bush policies. The Washington Post leads with news that burgeoning national debt will force the Treasury to borrow more money to repay bonds in the upcoming year, as 40 percent of private loans to the government come due in 2009.

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What's in the New York Times Magazine, the Economist, Time, Vanity Fair, and The Nation.

Marc Tracy — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:13:56 -0800

New York Times Magazine, Jan. 4Joe Nocera's cover story is a biography of the Value at Risk banking metric, which tends to conceal the small probability of massive losses. For example, Nocera notes, the odds that a $20 million Value at Risk trade will lose more than $20 million are only 1 percent. The problem, Nicholas Nassim Taleb tells Nocera, is that "more than $20 million" includes both $21 million and $21 billion, and in reality those who relied on Value at Risk failed to foresee those massive "black swans"—Taleb's phrase for extremely rare but catastrophic events. Taleb's hedge fund, designed to exploit such foul fowl, is up more than 65 percent this year. But a risk manager says of Value at Risk: "It's like an altimeter in aircraft. It has some margin for error, but if you're a pilot, you know how to deal with it." ... Caroline Kennedy's desired Senate appointment prompts one author to suggest an updated notion of "experience" that is more fair to women, whose career trajectories are less likely to fit male-imposed norms. "Let's stop with this talk of inexperience when we mean a range of experiences."

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Tips for budding politicians on how to avoid embarrassment on Facebook.

Abby Callard — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:12:21 -0800

People who work in politics have always had to worry about what they did before they worked in politics. But the sheer size and popularity of Facebook—140 million active users, at least 139.99 million of whom have been photographed drunk at a college party—present budding politicians (and budding political operatives) with a dilemma: How do they keep those pics from showing up on the front page?

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How to help your child learn to read.

Alan E. Kazdin and Carlo Rotella — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:11:03 -0800

As a parent, you feel a special deep panic when you realize that your child—your beautiful, clever, funny child, who regularly surprises you with precocious bons mots, who built an ingenious bow out of tubing and rubber bands that can shoot a chopstick across the living room with remarkable accuracy—is having trouble learning to read. Meanwhile, all the other kids appear to be breezing along, polishing off Harry Potter books while your child stumbles over the difference between "how" and "now." You don't want to be one of those hysterical parents who gets all crazy about every little developmental bump in the road, but, hey, your kid can't really read yet, and the others can. In your darker moments you feel the desolate urge to ratchet down your ambitions for your child from valedictorian to graduating at all.

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The story of the cow from four-legged co-worker to shrink-wrapped cutlet.

Sara Dickerman — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:10:25 -0800

In War and Peace, Tolstoy's Prince Andrei describes a woman who swoons at the sight of a calf being slaughtered: "She's so kind, she can't bear the sight of blood, but she eats the same calf in sauce with great appetite." This anecdote is really a metaphor for war, but it works just as neatly for, well, meat. Most of us carnivores are that lady, keeping the steer in the pasture mentally separated from the beef on our forks without too much consideration for how one becomes the other. In the past, this mental distance between the dinner table and the farm yard wasn't so easy to maintain; 19th-century Manhattanites, for example, might well have been confronted with the noises, smells, and sights of the unlicensed butcher in the tenement next to theirs slaughtering cows in his cellar. Over time, however, we've grown more and more alienated from how our meat gets to the table. In the grocery store, we choose from vast swaths of shrink-wrapped cutlets that seem to come from nowhere. How did this happen? Three recent beef-centric books help piece the story together.

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Are the insurgents winning in Pakistan?

Vanessa M. Gezari — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:09:38 -0800

PESHAWAR, Pakistan—The fields stretched to the horizon beneath a mild winter sun. A stream ran through them, and somewhere off in the distance, behind a stand of apricot trees, smoke curled from the chimney of a mud-walled house. A narrow lane connected the house and the village life it evoked to the loud, modern asphalt highway skirting Peshawar. We stood alongside this highway, in one of the transport-company parking lots that have become the de facto boundary between Pakistan's ungoverned tribal belt and the city.

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Corrections from the last week.

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:04:44 -0800

In the Dec. 31 "Family," Emily Bazelon misidentified the predator at the beginning of Finding Nemo. It was a barracuda, not a shark.

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Israel carries out first targeted assassination since Saturday and steps up cease-fire talks.

Daniel Politi — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:14:43 -0800

The Washington Post leads with the continuing Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip that yesterday killed a senior Hamas leader. It marked the first time in the nearly week-long bombing campaign that a Hamas leader was targeted and came at a time when Israel continues to mass troops and tanks along the Gaza border in preparation for a possible ground invasion. Israel also stepped up its diplomatic efforts in the face of mounting international pressure to bring an end to the punishing aerial campaign. The Wall Street Journal also leads its world-wide newsbox with Gaza and gets word that Israel is currently in discussions with Washington officials about the possibility of using international monitors to make sure Hamas stops its rocket attacks on Israel and that it's not able to rearm if there's a cease-fire.

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Rockets Fired From Lebanon Into Northern Israel

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:33:17 -0800

Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza threatened to broaden as at least three rockets came into northern Israel from Lebanon.

Gaza War Role Is Political Lift for Ex-Premier

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:34:31 -0800

The popularity of Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak is soaring, yet he was the least eager to strike Hamas.

China Losing Taste for Debt From the U.S.

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:55:02 -0800

As the global downturn has intensified, Beijing is starting to keep more of its money at home, which could have painful effects for U.S. borrowers.

U.S. Fashion’s One-Woman Bailout?

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:49:45 -0800

Seventh Avenue hopes Michelle Obama will be the lifeline to revive the fashion industry in a recession.

Obama Promises Bid to Overhaul Retiree Spending

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:29:56 -0800

Should the president-elect take on a serious effort to address the growing costs of entitlement programs, he would be opening up a potentially risky battle.

Eloping to Vegas? Why Not Lower Manhattan?

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:42:21 -0800

Officials are hoping that the new and gleaming Manhattan Marriage Bureau will make it more popular.

Atlanta Journal: Hard Times Find Replica of White House for Sale

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:01:38 -0800

An Atlanta man who lives in a scaled-down version of the presidential mansion is looking for a buyer.

Red Cross Accuses Israel of Neglecting Gaza Wounded

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:03:55 -0800

The Red Cross said it had discovered “shocking” scenes — including children next to their mothers’ corpses — when its representatives gained access to battered parts of Gaza.

Israelis Honor Fallen Soldiers, While Seeing the Gaza Campaign as Justified

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:46:47 -0800

Israelis are not relishing what lies ahead if the offensive on Gaza continues, but the majority remains staunchly behind the operation.

Grief and Rage at Stricken Gaza School

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:28:46 -0800

Gazans gathered to mourn the dozens of people who were killed, many of them children, when Israeli mortars hit near a school.

Obama Is Reported Set to Revise Counterterrorism Efforts

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:22:31 -0800

The president-elect’s plan would eliminate the independent domestic security adviser’s office and assign those duties to the National Security Council.

U.S. Plans Border ‘Surge’ Against Any Drug Wars

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:45:12 -0800

The soaring level of violence in Mexico resulting from the drug wars has led the United States to develop a contingency plan to prevent spillover across the border.

Oakland Turns Violent Over Shooting

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:54:20 -0800

Protesters angry over a deadly New Year’s Day shooting of a young black man by a transit police officer erupted into violence in downtown Oakland.

Asian and European Markets Drop

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:34:40 -0800

Stocks fell after profit warnings from major technology companies and continued economic gloom in Europe.

For Pittsburgh, There’s Life After Steel

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:56:00 -0800

The city’s reinvented economy, driven by health care and education, is proving resistant to downturns.

Baghdad Bureau: Predictions for Obama's Iraq

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:14:28 -0800

We're less than two weeks away from president-elect Barack Obama taking command of the American military in Iraq. Below are some predictions for what type of war he will inherit.

Dot Earth: A Walk in the (Icy) Woods

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:53:10 -0800

The importance of breaks, and the outdoors, in our increasingly screen-driven lives.