Newsweek articles from March 2007

Newsweek archives from March 2007

The Gossip Minus Guilt; The peeping-Tom trade has been outsourced to the paparazzi. Instead of venom traded over back fences, we have Us Weekly and 'The Insider.'.
March 5, 2007... Byline: Anna Quindlen The examination of conscience began when a hardworking and pious woman who had never watched "Access Hollywood" asked a question to which there was no good answer: "Who is Anna Nicole Smith?" It was the day of...

Skies Were Cloudy Before Jet Blew It.(JetBlue Airways Corp.)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Allan Sloan (With Temma Ehrenfeld in New York) In its brief but glorious life, JetBlue Airways has become a business-school case study. Business junkies everywhere have praised the customer service, new planes and clever marketing...

Mail Call.(Letter to the editor)
March 5, 2007... Collision Course for Conflict in Iran? Readers of our Feb. 19 cover story drew a line between the Iranian people and the antagonism between their president and George W. Bush. "It is truly frightening that world peace is threatened by Bush...

The Editor's Desk.
March 5, 2007... Byline: Jon Meacham On Thanksgiving Day, 2005, the soldier on our cover this week--Specialist Marissa Strock--was the gunner on a patrol in Iraq. Suddenly, four 1.55 artillery rounds from an improvised explosive device ripped through her...

The Mysterious Mullah Omar; Tracing the elusive footsteps of the Taliban's Supreme Leader--and bracing for what may be their bloodiest drive yet.
March 5, 2007... Byline: Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau There's no mistaking the thrill in Ghul Agha Akhund's voice. The Taliban field commander, speaking by mobile phone from his redoubt in Afghanistan's Helmand province, says the militants' covert network...

The Surge That Might Work; It would cost $100 million to restart all of Iraq's state companies. That's as much as the military will spend in the next 12 hours.
March 5, 2007... Byline: Fareed Zakaria (Write the author at comments@fareedzakaria.com.) We are now fighting a war intelligently in Iraq. The only problem is, it's the last war, not the present one. The United States has gambled all its efforts on a troop...

Untreated Wounds; Iraqi soldiers are injured at twice the rate of Americans, and their prospects for long-term care are bleak at best.(Cover story)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Babak Dehghanpisheh with Baghdad bureau reports Private Atiya was driving a heavy truck on the outskirts of Baghdad when he saw the flash. Then, a deafening boom and darkness. When Atiya came to, he was lying on the side of the road...

Europe's Apple Attack; Regulators say they want to liberate iTunes for all.
March 5, 2007... Byline: John D. Sparks Apple Inc. never lets anyone forget who it's not--Microsoft. Apple ads feature a hipster named Mac humiliating a pale, pudgy loser named PC; its slogan urges consumers to "think different." But the tech darling now...

The Rage of Aquarius; The Zodiac killer has never been caught, but David Fincher still made a riveting film about him.
March 5, 2007... Byline: David Ansen Obsession craves resolution the way a hunter craves his prey. But what happens to the obsessed when there is no resolution? David Fincher's fascinating, uncompromising "Zodiac" is about four men who became obsessed with...

My Turn: And on This Farm She Found a Future; Agriculture is a backbreaking, low-paying, male-dominated field. I wouldn't want any other job.
March 5, 2007... Byline: Nancy Brill (Brill lives in Cherry Hill, N.J.) The farmer had a tanned face, weathered from working in the hot sun and dry air. He took in my clean appearance and small, unmuscular body. "So," he said, "you like to get dirty?" ...

Forgotten Heroes.(Cover story)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Dan Ephron and Sarah Childress (With Jamie Reno, Eve Conant, John Barry, Richard Wolffe, Karen Springen, Jonathan Mummolo and Ty Brickhouse) After returning from Iraq in late 2005, Jonathan Schulze spent every day struggling not to...

The Apology Primary Is On; McCain's career-enhancing apologies are legion. But his reputation for using contrition to charm his way out of trouble might be catching up with him.(John McCain)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Jonathan Alter Hillary Clinton is right to resist efforts to make her cry uncle and apologize for her 2002 vote in favor of the Iraq-war resolution; that would look weak. Her mistake was in not anticipating this problem with the...

Net Roots Gets Meta; Which presidential candidate has the best Web site? You can surf them all, or just go to techPresident.com.(Website overview)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Daren Briscoe In the early race for 2008, most national polls have Hillary Clinton thumping Democratic rival Barack Obama by double digits. But the junior senator from Illinois can take comfort in at least one tally: MySpace,...

Fragged by An F. O. B. Hillary expected an attack from the right. But the shots came from an old Hollywood buddy of Bill's.(David Geffen, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bill Clinton )
March 5, 2007... Byline: Evan Thomas (With Eleanor Clift and Mark Hosenball in Washington, Johnnie L. Roberts and Jonathan Alter in New York and Andrew Murr and Sean Smith in Los Angeles) Last December, a NEWSWEEK reporter tentatively broached a delicate...

HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW ... PRINCE HARRY?(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... The 22-year-old royal will be serving his country like any brave soldier--he's going to Iraq. More questions and a photo gallery at xtra.NEWSWEEK.com. What is Harry's rank? A. Cornet B. Captain C. First Lieutenant D....

Newsmakers.(Interview)(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Nicki Gostin Q&A: CRAIG FERGUSON Britney Spears was in and out (and in and out and in again) of rehab last week, but you won't catch Ferguson making fun of her on CBS's "Late, Late Show." He spoke with Nicki Gostin. Why did...

Anna Nicole's Trail of Tears.(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... It was hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the battle over Smith's body. There haven't been these many crazy characters since the O.J. trial--and this one includes a weepy judge, a mother and two lovers. Our brief: Larry Seidlin: A...

Perspectives.
March 5, 2007... Byline: Quotation sources: AP, CNN, AP, Reuters, CNN, ABC News, New York Times (2), AP (2), The Sun "Iran has not suspended... enrichment-related activities." A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, on Iran's alleged...

Rough Justice Edition.
March 5, 2007... CW sez keep an eye on Justice Dept.'s political purge of seven competent U.S. attorneys. What are Bushies covering up? Bush (down) Visited Walter Reed, but missed the scandalously horrible conditions. P.S.: His new budget stiffs vets. ...

The Politics of the Brit Drawdown.
March 5, 2007... Byline: Stryker McGuire, Richard Wolffe and Babak Dehghanpisheh In public, British and American officials say the U.K.'s withdrawal of troops from southern Iraq is a sign of success. But that wasn't the private reaction when the Brits first...

New Marines: Coalition of the Swimming.(Navy plans to use trained dolphins and sea lions to detect seaborne attackers)(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Marc Bain and Jessica Ramirez The baleful Bottlenose? The sinister sea lion? Citing the need to boost security at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor on the Puget Sound, the Navy recently announced that its preferred plan, currently in use at...

Gallaudet's Bad Grade.(Gallaudet University)(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Nick Summers Students at Gallaudet rebelled last year over whether the appointed president was "deaf enough" to lead the nation's premier university for the deaf and hard of hearing. But while debate focused on issues of Deaf...

Targeted By Tehran?(New York Police Department suspects Iranian terrorist attacks)(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Mark Hosenball Increasing tensions between Washington and Tehran have revived New York Police Department concerns that Iranian agents may already have targeted the city for terror attacks. Such attacks could be aimed at bridges and...

Reporter.(American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion by Paul Barrett)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Lisa Miller (With Rayhane Sanders) In the aftermath of 9/11, when the offices of The Wall Street Journal were temporarily moved from Ground Zero to SoHo, a young journalist sat at his desk and edited one story after another about...

Ads Made For You.(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Jonathan Mummolo Ads just got personal. Thanks to radio frequency identification (RFID) tags-- scannable devices like the ones in an E-ZPass--advertisers can tailor messages to individuals. Last month, Mini USA began erecting...

Ordering Protection.(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Hilary Shenfeld The couple had a fight--and the woman returned home to find the body of her gray-and-white kitten, decapitated, in her front yard. (Court papers didn't ID the Bethalto, Ill., woman.) Similar incidents are prompting...

Fast Chat: Northern Exposure.(Interview)(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Karen Springen Barbara Hillary has a big dream. At 75, the Queens, N.Y., resident wants to be the first African-American woman to set foot on the North Pole. She plans to fly out of Longyearbyen, Norway, with a group on April 20;...

To Boldly Go ... On?(another Star Trek film to be released in 2008)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Joshua Alston Fans of the "Star Trek" franchise love forward-looking stories, but for a while now they've had to live in the past. Trekkers flocked to Christie's auction house this past October, snapping up more than $7 million...

A Life In Books.(literary influences on Eric Foner)(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... Eric Foner wrote the book on Reconstruction--literally. The Columbia historian also penned "Who Owns History?" and "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men," among other scholarly but accessible works. The prof shares his required reading: My...

A $2 Trillion Footnote? The costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have far exceeded almost all estimates, but that's much less important than it seems.(Column)
March 5, 2007... ***** CORRECTION: CLARIFICATION: In a previous column, "The Stubborn Welfare State," (Feb. 19) I showed the shares of federal spending going to defense, payments to individuals (Social Security, Medicare etc.), interest on the debt and...

How to Design a Healthier Planet.
March 5, 2007... Byline: Jerry Adler The green movement is so much more than a referendum on what kind of car we drive--or don't. In a post-McMansion age, our homes, offices and community facilities have become a reflection of our newly green values,...

Raiders Of the Lost Tomb; A book and movie allege the final resting place of Mary, Joseph and the King of Kings has been found. Controversy to follow.
March 5, 2007... Byline: Lisa Miller and Joanna Chen In Jerusalem, that ancient and holy city, people's houses are built on bones. For thousands of years, hundreds of generations of Jews, Muslims and Christians have been laid to rest in its rocky soil. Tova...

Mmmm, Tasty Chemicals; A new book 'deconstructs' a Twinkie and analyzes all 39 ingredients. Industrial-strength junk food, anyone?(Twinkie, Deconstructed)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Anne Underwood As Steve Ettlinger dropped down a Wyoming mine shaft, plummeting 1,600 feet in an open-mesh cage, he wondered how many other food writers had ever donned hard hats and emergency breathing equipment in pursuit of a...

Decoding 'The Secret'; Oprah lives by it. Millions are reading it. The latest self-help sensation claims we can change our lives by thinking. But this 'new thought' may just be new marketing.(Oprah Winfrey)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Jerry Adler (With Matthew Philips in New York, Mary Carmichael in Boston, Karen Springen in Chicago and Kendall Hill in Sydney) If you're a woman trying to lose weight, you had your choice of two pieces of advice last week. One,...

The Baby Who's Not Supposed to Be Alive; Amillia's doctor didn't realize just how young she was.
March 5, 2007... Byline: Pat Wingert The chance of survival of a 21-week, 6-day-old fetus is zero. That's something Miami obstetrician Guillermo Lievano thought he knew for sure. Then he delivered Amillia Taylor, who weighed just 10 ounces, and appears to...

Health: I Screen, You Screen.(screening tests do not result in reduction of heart ailments, according to a study)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Joan Raymond Hank Furman prides himself on wringing the last cent out of a dollar. But when it comes to good health, "no amount of money is too much," says Furman, a 73-year-old retired machinist from Euclid, Ohio. That's why he...

The Checklist; Our top picks for the week ahead.(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... GO to Ireland. Aer Lingus is offering round trips from New York, Boston or Chicago to Dublin or Shannon for $399, including car rental. Book by Wednesday for specific March departure dates. SEE the moon turn red as it passes completely...

Family: Jazzy Odes to Boogers.(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Brian Braiker Kids' music improved immeasurably around the time They Might Be Giants released 2002's "No!" But now it seems we've entered a golden era that even parents can love. Some top picks: 'MOMMY SAYS NO!' With their...

At Your Service.(cell-phone services)(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Cathy Lu Fed up with mainstream wireless carriers? Try connecting with one of these specialized cell-phone services. Amp'd Mobile (ampd.com ; $30 and up per month, plus $10 to $20 for video): Watch original programs like the...

A Case Of the Blues.(JetBlue Airways Corp.)(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Linda Stern When people are as contrite as the folks at JetBlue, you have to forgive them, right? Especially when they're offering rock-bottom fares, like $39 from D.C. to Boston, $59 from New York to Houston and some money-back...

SMALL BUT SPEEDY.(Austin Mini Cooper)(Product/service evaluation)
March 5, 2007... Byline: TARA WEINGARTEN When the Mini Cooper folks took me and a few other automotive journalists to a racetrack to test these new second-generation coupes, it had the trappings of a joke. We're talking about a subcompact city car, not a...

UNCORKED: BRUNELLO DI MONTALCINO.(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
March 5, 2007... Byline: Wine Spectator rates wines on the 100-point scale; all wines are blind-tasted. Prices are those suggested by producers or importers. For more information visit winespectator.com. Brunello di Montalcino, the Sangiovese-based red wine...

Whose Art Is It? American museums are returning some of the world's great antiquities to their original homes. Should they? A new debate over who owns the past is underway.
March 12, 2007... Byline: Cathleen McGuigan (With Andrew Murr and Barbie Nadeau) In 1972, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art paid a record-smashing $1 million for an ancient Greek vase known as the Euphronios Krater. It was worth every penny. The...

Sontag's Last Stands; The final book from one of our greatest essayists.(At the Same Time)(Book review)
March 12, 2007... Byline: David Gates Before she died in 2004, Susan Sontag mapped out what would be her last book of essays. (Not her last book--as always, she just wanted to get back to fiction.) Some planned pieces never got written, and she didn't have...

He'll Take Manhattan; A thoroughly modern author revisits New York's past.(Book review)
March 12, 2007... Byline: David Gates Early in Kurt Andersen's "Heyday," set in 1848-49, a character admits his literary taste isn't arty: "I know I am supposed to read Balzac and Flaubert... but I still crave the impossible coincidence. Give me Dumas, or...

A City Where Murder Got to Be a Way of Life.(Book review)(Brief review)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Malcolm Jones Michael Lesy's "Murder City" is a creepy book. Fascinating, but creepy. Lesy ("Wisconsin Death Trip") focuses on Windy City murders in the '20s, a time and place we all think we know: Capone, Leopold and Loeb,...

The Street Turns Green; Goldman Sachs got environmentalists to embrace a utility they loved to hate--and sealed a $45 billion deal.(Company overview)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Johnnie L. Roberts Believe it or not, Goldman Sachs's interest in green goes beyond its record profits. The firm chauffeurs execs in hybrid cars, and the "Green Tower," its new $2 billion headquarters rising in Manhattan, is so...

Comin' Through! Toyota is on track to pass General Motors this year as the world's No. 1 auto company. How GM plans to fight back.
March 12, 2007... Byline: Keith Naughton and Allan Sloan (With Christian Caryl in Toyota City, Japan, and Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo) General Motors and Toyota were once neck-and-neck when it came to developing high-mileage gasoline-electric hybrid cars. About...

Mail Call; Treating an Often Debilitating Disease.(Letter to the editor)
March 12, 2007... Men suffering from depression responded to our cover story offering advice and recounting their experiences. One physician wrote, "I find it easier, but painful, to suffer in silence rather than seek help and sabotage my career. I suspect I'm...

The Editor's Desk.(Arthur Schlesinger Jr.)(Editorial)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Jon Meacham Whenever Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who died last week at age 89, was asked whether individuals or abstract forces play the larger role in shaping history, he would propose a speculative scenario. In the early 1930s,...

Longfellow: A Founder; That his 200th birthday passed unremarked is redundant evidence of this forward-leaning democracy's historical amnesia.
March 12, 2007... Byline: George F. Will One hundred years ago, Feb. 27 was enlivened by events around the nation commemorating what had happened 100 years before that, in 1807. But last week's bicentennial of the birth of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow passed...

Kabul's Peril; A suicide bomber hits the center of U.S. force in South Asia--and the Taliban's spring offensive is yet to come.
March 12, 2007... Byline: Michael Hirsh and Sami Yousafzai (With Holly Bailey with Cheney and Ron Moreau) Dick Cheney was cool and collected, just as he had been on that September morning five years before when two Secret Service agents burst into his White...

Silence of the Sadrists; So far the Mahdi Army is lying low. But for how long?
March 12, 2007... Byline: Rod Nordland (With Ayad Obeidi in Baghdad and bureau reports) Early in the latest u.s. and Iraqi attempt to bring peace to Baghdad, one high-ranking Iraqi official included Moqtada al-Sadr in his prayers. "Allah, lo yehdih, lo...

The Sky Isn't Falling in China; The day after the Shanghai stock market fell, we saw again all the same warnings about the Chinese system and the odds of its collapse.
March 12, 2007... Byline: Fareed Zakaria (Write the author at comments@fareedzakaria.com.) For some years economists and analysts have been wondering what it would take to scare financial markets. Wars, coups, soaring commodity prices, increased energy...

Soul on Ice, And a Twist; Singer Amy Winehouse is a mess. Lucky for us.
March 12, 2007... Byline: Joshua Alston Amy Winehouse takes a while to warm up to new people, and until she does, she stammers--badly. "I'm. Really. Sorry," she says, pausing for what seems like a minute between each word. "It'll. Go away. Once I. Relax."...

Dear Satu: Letters Tell The Story of Our Lives; For 40 years, a note from my pen pal could make my day. At last I met the woman behind the words.(Personal account)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Rey de La Cruz (De La Cruz lives in Glenview, Ill.) Satu gave me a big hug and said, "It wasn't so hard to recognize you." Satu Vaverka and I had been writing each other since 1966, when we were 11 or 12 years old, and had exchanged...

Master of Disaster.(former New York City mayor and presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani)(Cover story)(Biography)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Jonathan Darman (With Susannah Meadows, Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff, Eve Conant, Sarah Childress, Andrew Romano and Jonathan Mummolo) Rudy Giuliani had been speaking for six minutes before anyone in the audience thought to...

Bloomberg: The Waiting Game; His billions allow Mayor Mike to enter the'08 race late.
March 12, 2007... Byline: Eleanor Clift In the aftermath of 9/11, nobody thought he could fill Rudy Giuliani's shoes. But under billionaire Michael Bloomberg, New York City's Democrat-turned-Republican mayor, the city rebounded. He's overseen a continued...

Wrong Time for An Urban Cowboy? His lead in the polls makes sense, but Giuliani's leadership style is out of sync with history's pendulum.(Column)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Jonathan Alter Presidential elections are said to be about the future, but they also end up as verdicts on the past. Voters often reject the type of leadership they have recently experienced. In 1960, young JFK was the antidote to...

Arthur Schlesinger, 1917-2007.(Obituary)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Jon Meacham On a Saturday evening in Georgetown in late 1946, the columnist Joe Alsop was giving a dinner at his house in the 2700 block of Dumbarton. The guests were predictably drawn from the glamorous and the powerful; Supreme...

Perspectives.(quotations drawn from current events)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Quotation sources: AP, Baltimore Sun, San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, New York Times, AP (2) "He's not yet martyred." Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah, in a recently aired...

A Mass Firing Puts Justice on the Hot Seat.(attorneys fired at Department of Justice)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Michael Isikoff The firings of eight U.S. attorneys has put the heat on top Justice Department officials--and some GOP members of Congress. The unusual mass dismissals took place late last year, but the controversy escalated last...

Jefferson, the Chosen President?(Brief article)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Nick Summers and Marc Bain U.S. President. Author of the Declaration of Independence. Force behind the Louisiana Purchase. And... Jew? A new genetic study raises the tantalizing possibility that Thomas Jefferson may have had Jewish...

At Sea, a 'Colossal' Catch.(990-pound colossal squid caught)(Brief article)
March 12, 2007... ***** CORRECTION: Correction: In "At Sea, A 'Colossal' Catch" (Periscope, March 12), we incorrectly stated that a giant squid had been caught in Arctic waters. In fact, it was a "colossal squid" and was found in Antarctic waters. NEWSWEEK...

Proving You're You.(online banking security measures)(Brief article)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Samantha Henig For years, anyone calling a bank for account info has been prepared to answer a standard security question: "What's your mother's maiden name?" But as the threat of identity theft grows, financial-services companies...

Creative Interpretation.(U.S. military intelligence, North Korea)(Brief article)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Michael Hirsh and Mark Hosenball Intel analysis is an art, not a science--and one that sometimes depends on the politics of the moment. Last week the government's senior North Korea intel analyst, Joseph DeTrani, told Congress that...

Vets: Finally, Some Action.(investigation into mismanagement at Walter Reed Army Medical Center)(Brief article)
March 12, 2007... Byline: John Barry and Richard Wolffe For a lot of soldiers, tangled bureaucracy and shabby living quarters are a way of life. Perhaps that's why the brass didn't respond to reports of mismanagement and decay at the Walter Reed Army...

BeliefWatch: Good Word.(Kathleen Kennedy Townsend)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Lisa Miller On the day of John F. Kennedy's funeral, Robert Kennedy wrote his eldest child, who was 12, a short note: "Dear Kathleen," it said, "you seemed to understand that Jack died and was buried today. As the oldest of the...

Cleaner Karats.(jewelers express concern about human rights and environmental issues)(Brief article)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Alicia Barney Those about to propose have always had to consider the four C's of engagement rings: cut, clarity, color and carats. Now there's a fifth consideration: is it P.C.? Nineteen jewelers, including Tiffany & Co., Ben...

Camp Deathly Hallows?("Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows")(Brief article)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Joshua Alston Jill Kleinman closed her children's bookstore to operate a summer camp, so she thought her days of catering to young bibliophiles and their parents were over. But last month "I got a call from a parent who wants to...

A Life In Books: Harold Bloom.(literary influences on the Yale scholar)(Brief article)
March 12, 2007... Pushed to make more-unusual choices, Yale prof Harold Bloom was willing to dispense with the Bible ("since it's gotten all mixed up with questions of belief" in what is now an "insanely religious" country), but would not budge on Shakespeare,...

Taylor's Bad Day.(former American Idol contestant Taylor Hicks)(Brief article)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Ramin Setoodeh Did America pick the wrong "American Idol" last season? Taylor Hicks's new album, which hit record stores in December, has sold 640,000 copies. On the other hand, fourth-place finisher Chris Daughtry has moved 1.7...

Try to Relax--Enjoy the Ride; Which of these dueling stories will prevail--a good economy or a bad one? I'm voting for the better half.(Column)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Jane Bryant Quinn (Reporter Associate: Temma Ehrenfeld) Omigosh, what does it mean? are we in for it? A recession? Just when investments finally looked good again? How can anyone trust the market? "Frank, I told you to sell those...

Hidden Risks; Rare but often serious complications continue to plague the most common laparoscopic operation.
March 12, 2007... Byline: Mary Carmichael When surgeons removed Carol Hurlburt's diseased gallbladder in 2005, they had to cut a long, gory incision in her abdomen, and she was still hurting when her husband developed his own gallbladder infection a month...

Secrets, Lies and Love; Her father was a spy and his mother was a nun. Two new family memoirs join a revealing series that probes the past.
March 12, 2007... Byline: Barbara Kantrowitz A few years ago, just as her father was about to disappear into the fog of dementia, journalist Lucinda Franks stumbled upon a small box in a corner of his dilapidated apartment. The contents shocked her. Beneath...

The Gospel of Prothero; A Boston University professor argues that Americans, though 'spiritual,' are woefully ignorant about religion.(Steve Prothero)(Biography)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Lisa Miller Steve Prothero is the kind of professor who makes you want to go back to college. During an hour lecture of his Boston University course "Death and Immortality," 200 students sat rapt last week as his train of thought...

A Case of Gender Blues; A city manager planning a sex-change operation may lose his job, reviving a debate about basic rights.(Largo, Florida)(Biography)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Lynn Waddell and Arian Campo-Flores (With Julie Scelfo) After a lifetime of agonizing over his gender identity, Steven Stanton decided to become a woman about two years ago. "It wasn't something I wanted to do," says Stanton, 48,...

The Great Sorority Purge; When a group of 'sisters' were kicked out of their chapter house, many blamed hair color and dress size.
March 12, 2007... Byline: Jerry Adler (With Raina Kelley in Greencastle, Ind., and Hilary Shenfeld in Chicago) In all honesty, Carolyn Thatcher, a senior theater major at DePauw University, doesn't see how she fell short of the standards of a Delta Zeta...

The 'Barbie Bandits' Get Busted.(two teenage girls rob supermarket bank, Atlanta, Georgia)(Brief article)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Matthew Philips The image of two young girls smiling while robbing a bank outside Atlanta was beamed across the global news spectrum last week. Dubbed the Barbie Bandits, the girls, both 19, made off with a "substantial" wad of...

Changes in Patents May Be Pending; 'Patent trolls' come out of the woodwork after companies have spent billions on a product.
March 12, 2007... Byline: Steven Levy Jon Dudas's flight was canceled, so he didn't make the first day of last week's Tech Policy Summit held in San Jose, Calif. Just as well. One of the subjects of the day was patents, and he could not have avoided hearing...

BlogWatch.(Brief article)
March 12, 2007... A mainstream-media snapshot of what's hot (and what's not) in the ever-widening world of weblogs kotaku.com scoop blows a planned Playstation announcement, prompting Sony to cut ties with the site. But not for long. More evidence that...

What's On Your Label?(food labels)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Anna Kuchment A decade ago, environmentally conscious consumers had one main label to check if they wanted to make sure the food they were buying was acceptable: organic. Today, supermarket aisles are filled with products that...

The Checklist; Our top picks for the week ahead.(movies, books and more)(Brief article)
March 12, 2007... SEE "Borat" on DVD. Sacha Baron Cohen's guerrilla comedy--naked wrestling and all--is one of the funniest and most hotly debated films in ages. READ "Driving With Dead People" by Monica Holloway (Simon Spotlight Entertainment. $23). An...

My First MySpace.(Product/service evaluation)(Brief article)
March 12, 2007... Byline: Brian Braiker When 8-year-old Kevin Robson underwent a bone-marrow transplant, he was separated from friends and family for five months. That didn't stop him from sledding, dancing and playing Connect-4 with them every day. Kevin...