Gotham City is certainly a nightmare town: New York reimagined (by the marvelous production designer Bo Welch) as a half-Gothic, half-Bauhaus three-ring circus of corruption. The ineffectual mayor (Michael Murphy) is a mere figurehead; the real power is in the hands of the avaricious businessman Max Shreck (Christopher Walken), who wants to build a power plant that will suck all the energy out of the city. (This white-haired mogul may be an inside dig at Time Warner boss Steve Ross....

But Ecclestone’s once ironclad hold on F1 is being threatened. He no longer has a lock on the TV rights; after a series of deals ending in 2001, Kirch Media acquired 75 percent of SLEC, the Ecclestone rights company named after his Croatian wife, Slavica, a former model. When Kirch collapsed, a consortium of banks took control of the firm. And now there’s a new challenge: the top F1 car manufacturers–Ferrari, Mercedes, BMW, Renault and Ford, which underwrite the racing teams and give the sport its considerable technological cachet–are poised to grab a much bigger chunk of the financial pie for their teams....

For once the Grammys were promising spectacle, and in large part they delivered. The performances that coupled old and new artists were contrived, but they generally succeeded in spite of it. There didn’t seem to be any good reason to pair Rihanna with Prince confrères Morris Day and the Time, but who’s going to protest a performance of “Jungle Love?” Not me. In more sensible pairings, Daft Punk joined Kanye West for a performance of “Stronger,” West’s song that samples the Parisian dance duo....

The CIA denied there was any cover-up. ““It’s very important to explain publicly that we are not holding back information,’’ CIA Director John Deutch told NEWSWEEK. Pentagon officials pointed out that a massive scientific inquiry has been looking into the veterans’ ailments for years now. ““Make no mistake, they are experiencing real symptoms and illnesses with real consequences,’’ says Dr. Stephen Joseph, the Pentagon’s top health official. But the science is being overwhelmed by politics in what Joseph calls a ““tidal wave’’ of conspiracy theories and cover-up charges....

““Message in a Bottle’’ has its dumb points: too many shots of churning surf and lovers nestled in beach blankets, not to mention the premise that women find incommunicative, hulking shells like Blake the height of irresistibility. But it gets you. Wright Penn is luminous in a trench coat and sneakers. Paul Newman, as Costner’s crotchety dad, gets the best lines. ““That’s a mistake, letting her taste your coffee,’’ he offers, as Costner packs a boating picnic....

Not that the likes of Tina Barney, Larry Sultan, Doug DuBois, Philip-Lorca diCorcia and a few others should have intervened on behalf of their subjects, many of whom are friends or family. Quite the opposite: they might have left them alone to go on padding about their boudoirs and rec rooms with the freedom to look as foolish or vulgar as they pleased without being skewered by a camera. Take Barney’s huge color blowup, “Sunday New York Times” (1982), for example....

The champagne hasn’t stopped flowing for the 26-year-old, who continued her championship szn in Sydney, leading the United States to their fourth-straight FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup crown. Despite arriving late and missing the first two games of the tournament as she celebrated the Las Vegas Aces championship, she went from the parade to the airport and stepped onto the floor in Sydney without missing a beat. The Aces star averaged 17....

Poe, now 39, had long wanted to run her own show. An aerobics fanatic, she also longed for lighter, more comfortable workout shoes. So she left her job as national sales manager for a gift manufacturer to try her hand at high-tech cobbling. Investors were cool. “Because I had no track record in the industry, no financial experience–I never even graduated from college-they laughed at me,” says Poe. “How can you think you can go up against Nike and Reebok?...

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This new middle-class rebellion isn’t rejecting everything that progressives stand for; the Left’s critique of neo-liberal excess is resonating, as is the need for improved access to health care. But the current focus on “systemic racism,” coupled with a newfound and heavily enforced cultural conformism and the obsessive focus on a never-ending litany of impending “climate emergences” are less likely to pass muster with most of the middle class, no matter how popular they are with the media, academics, and others in the progressive corner....

That made the incident more than just another murder. Detectives from LAPD’s elite Robbery-Homicide Division took over the case from local units. Police quickly concluded that Gonzalez’s killing was a mistake. The killer apparently intended to shoot the friend in the passenger seat, who was not identified. Gonzalez had reportedly known the man as a casual friend for years and was spending time with him while visiting her mother, Felicia Parks-Mena, one of the chief’s daughters....

Wilson’s immigration offensive is also an attempt to halt the erosion of his own political fortunes. His job-approval rating is an abysmal 15 percent. Up for re-election next year, he’ll face voters angry and frightened by the worst economic times since the 1930s. Unemployment is nearly 10 percent. Hard-line conservatives in his own party, upset by an $8 billion tax increase he pushed through Sacramento in 1991, are threatening to embarrass him With a primary challenge....

If such policies sound odd to outsiders, it’s music to the ears of Aslan Kuytu, a hard-core nationalist who voted for the party in hopes that it would get tough on leftists, Kurds and Islamists–not to mention those who are “selling Turkey to foreign bankers.” Thickset and mustached, the 50-year-old Istanbul shopkeeper complains that the party has spent too much time toeing the line set by its bigger coalition partners in the run-up to the last elections....

Sadly, Thailand is now looking like the next country to join this race to the bottom. In January this year, the cabinet approved the draft of a wildly new repressive law on civil society. If, as is expected, the law is soon approved by parliament, it is no exaggeration to say it could mean the death of Thailand’s vibrant civil society scene. The consequences for human rights in Thailand, and the wider region, would be severe....

In Atlanta’s case, there is so far no evidence of the outright bribery that came to light in the Salt Lake City scandal. The memos that emerged last week “were private comments that people made early in the game,” said Charles Battle, executive vice president of the Atlanta Olympic Organizing Committee. “I don’t know that we acted on this information.” But Atlanta business leaders were playing hardball in their $7....

More than four months into the Taliban’s reign, the Biden administration has largely taken a middle line between these two options. While U.S. officials have met with the Taliban on several occasions since the summer and remain open to the prospects of a business-like relationship, the White House is also using financial tools to force Afghanistan’s de-facto government to change its ways. Washington remains adamant that the Taliban need to establish an inclusive government, allow women and girls equal access to education, stop repressing its former Afghan government opponents and ease up on human rights abuses....

Preseason games mean something to the guys who are playing in them, and the people who work at the arena, and the media that covers day-to-day events of the teams that are involved, and some of the people in the stands. For me — whose job consists in no small part of stuff like writing about a Mighty Ducks reunion — they mean nothing. I must create my own meaning....

The violence spoiled a much-needed star turn for Nigeria. Yet few Nigerians thought the pageant, or the offending column, was anything more than a spark that ignited an already volatile situation in their fractious country, which is divided almost equally between Muslims and non-Muslims. Ever since a Christian southerner, Olusegun Obasanjo, became president after elections in 1999, Muslims have been seething (and sometimes rioting). A dozen northern states have imposed Muslim Sharia since then, in defiance of the central government....

On Saturday, Manchester United were unable to match the feats of their manager’s title-winning sides as they were held to a 2-2 draw in a pulsating encounter away to Stoke City which asked them a whole heap of questions they had not had to even consider when strolling to their first three successes of the league season. Not only were they forced to come from behind for the first time this term, they then had to cope with a team pegging them back too as Mark Hughes’ Potters made them work right to the bitter end....