You have no idea how painful it was. To sit in the Oval Office and watch on TV the American troops, military, civilians being evacuated along with as many South Vietnamese as we could who had supported us. And we had a conflict. The secretary of Defense, Jim Schlesinger, had wanted us to get out of Saigon a week earlier. And then we had Graham Martin, the ambassador. He wanted to stay until the North Vietnamese shot him....

“My view is still very much the same as it was in 1982 [when he published “Prophesy Deliverance!” championing “an Afro-American revolutionary Christianity”],” says West. But now “I think . . . there is a sense among . . . Americans that they’re living in a decaying civilization . . . And in such a moment they’re willing to listen to anybody.” In truth, West has written a book quite different from his early works....

But in recent months a new leader has given the movement a burst of momentum. Billy Roper, a 32-year-old former schoolteacher from Arkansas, has spent months quietly reaching out to disenfranchised racists and neo-Nazis across the country, uniting them under his new group, White Revolution. “Billy Roper is clearly a rising star among hard-core racists,” says Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League. Soft-spoken and polite to a fault, Roper looks and sounds less like a white supremacist than an avuncular union organizer....

Because I pointed out a real problem. You don’t have to know anybody or go through any back doors if the problem you are pointing out is valid. If your ideas are good, they’ll use them. How do you feel about Prime Minister Zhu Rongji and his economic reforms? I can understand what he’s trying to do, but I don’t agree with his policies on state-owned-enterprise (SOE) reform. Right now they think that the way to fix the SOEs is to change the leaders....

He didn’t have the biting tongue that makes fans cheer. He didn’t display the don’t-mess-with-me swagger. No, he just appeared as a sack of sadness tied up with a little bit of hope that buckling into a race car would allow him to get his life to a little bit back to normal. In front of the cameras, it didn’t seem possible he could feel any normalcy at all this weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway....

Consider the magnitude of recent policy reversals: The administration had stubbornly insisted that no more troops were needed in Iraq. But today, there are 20,000 additional soldiers in the country. From the start it refused to give the U.N. any political role in Iraq. Now the U.N. is an indispensable partner, both in the June 30 transition and in preparing for elections. Radical “de-Baathification,” the pet project of the Pentagon and Ahmad Chalabi, has been overturned....

The former Tennessee governor has a far better chance to succeed than his predecessor at Education, Lauro Cavazos, who will be remembered for nothing, other than that he did nothing memorable. Like Reagan’s education secretary, William Bennett, Alexander is skilled at building consensus and bending bureaucracies at his will. He also has plenty of experience dealing with teachers’ unions and education administrators, and, as former president of the National Governors’ Association (he directed its five-year study of education reform), he has strong relationships with state leaders across the country....

Meeting with Clinton the next day, Bibi offered to pull troops out of less than 10 percent of the West Bank. Yasir Arafat, who had his own visit to the White House last week, had a succinct response to the offer: “Peanuts.”

Having known Castro since the birth of the Cuban revolution in January 1959, I do not remember his ever displaying the kind of deference, if not veneration, that he showed John Paul II on that Roman morning. Watching him on television, as he murmured his greetings to the pope, I had the sensation of a Fidel Castro who, for perhaps the first time in his life, was humble and tender....

The Floatride Energy 4 running shoes can work for runners at any level because they can accommodate slow- and fast-paced runs. They aren’t exactly cheap, but they are competitively priced at $110. A new, higher-end addition to Reebok’s line, the Floatride Energy X shoes include a carbon fiber plate in the forefoot. And because of the plate, the running shoes provide even more energy return after many miles. Priced at $170, the Energy X rivals other shoes that usually land past the $200 mark....

I think they’re the best-qualified people that I interviewed, on balance. I sure do. I think I did a pretty good job. I think it’s a very talented cabinet. I think that this diversity issue is very important; I’ve always believed that if you looked hard enough, you could find really gifted people who came from different walks of life and different experiences. Well, first of all, I don’t know if it’s true....

Those who don’t have family in the U.S. are meant to be transferred to an official state facility, the Associated Press reported. However, the average time unaccompanied minors spent at the emergency shelters was 37 days as of this week, according to the HHS data. More than half of the migrant children at emergency facilities do have a close family member, such as a parent or grandparent, in the country, the data showed....

The faithful cheered, but Gore fumed. He hadn’t been warned of what the president would say. Gore thought he had made it clear–in private and public–that Clinton should butt out of the presidential campaign. Their relationship had always been an uneasy, vaguely competitive one. Gore was not about to ask for public help, or advice, even if Democrats (including the party chair, Ed Rendell) were agitating for Clinton to play a bigger role, and even if The New York Times–that same morning–had front-paged a story about Clinton’s exclusion from the campaign....

Making up most of those new cases and hospitalizations: large chunks of the remaining unvaccinated population. According to Verywell Health’s latest vaccine sentiment tracker survey, nearly a quarter (23%) of our respondents remain undecided or against getting the COVID-19 vaccine. This proportion hasn’t changed meaningfully in two months. With a significant portion of the U.S. population still unvaccinated, virus variants are given more room to spread—making the risk of COVID worse for everyone....

“Unlike other (products), this doesn’t give you a real full feeling,” Green told Sporting News during a telephone interview Tuesday. “It tastes great and sits well in my stomach.” The same couldn’t be said of Cincinnati’s 2017 season for Green, the rest of the franchise or a downtrodden fan base that is gassed from supporting a club without a playoff win for 27 seasons and counting. DeCOURCY: The (still) cursed life of a Cincinnati sports fan...

According to a report from the Orlando Sentinel, the AAF and the Orlando Apollos owe the University of Central Florida $1.1 million on paper, per the contract signed between the organizations. The report noted most of the money is for future rent of Spectrum Stadium, but UCF sent three invoices to the AAF for the three home games the Apollos played in the stadium and for security and police detail....

The R&B and hip-hop artist said she wanted to be remembered as a good person after she was “long gone.” Aaliyah, who would have turned 44 on Monday, died in a plane crash on August 25, 2001. The “Try Again” singer had been in the Bahamas filming a music video for her song “Rock the Boat.” A resurfaced MTV interview was shared on Twitter by a fan. In it, Aaliyah said she wanted to be known as a rounded entertainer who could “do it all....

A player representative from each team voted on the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) on Tuesday, and two big names—Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and San Francisco 49ers defensive back Richard Sherman—voted “no” for the new CBA. Player reps collectively voted 17-14-1 in favor of the new CBA, and now the proposal will be sent to the players union, which has 2,000 members. If passed, then part of it could go into effect this year, like adding an extra playoff team for each conference, which would eliminate the first-round bye for the No....