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Even acting head coach Trent Cull (filling in for Travis Green, who flew with the Canucks’ veterans to China for games against the Kings later this week) couldn’t help but notice. Amid the chaos of a game with a shinny score and beer league structure, Cull couldn’t help but take a moment and appreciate Brock Boeser’s performance in its midst. “It’s tough to say you had a lot of bright spots with that kind of a score, but [Boeser] has that – as I’m starting to learn – ability to slow the game down,” Cull said to a room of reporters when asked about Boeser’s three-point night....

The Native American actor, whose frequent guest roles on TV have had him on everything from “The X-Files” to “Dharma & Greg,” recently opened Red Crow Creations. The studio will produce films, documentaries, live music and children’s programming–all from an American Indian point-of-view. “For generations, Native Americans have agonized over the misrepresentation of historical facts,” Westerman said. “The powers that be have justified the genocide against our people by saying we were merely savages....

JOZSEF KUN PECS, HUNGARY

Africa is more than academic to children at Chicago’s Suder Elementary School, a public school in the shadow of the troubled Henry Horner housing project. Every summer, principal Brenda Daigre takes 10 fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders on a study trip to Africa itself (the money comes from community contributions). In order to qualify, students must study French, math (for converting money), journals) and local customs. The kids-many of whom have never even seen downtown Chicago-say the trip opens up the world to them....

But they’re growing. Common Law courts have sprung up in at least 11 states in the farm belt and the West over the last year, organized by a cross section of people bent on directly challenging government. In living rooms, bingo halls and convention centers, dozens gather weekly to form juries, present evidence and issue kangaroo-court indictments, liens, arrest warrants-and even death sentences. None of this has the force of law....

Marshall retired in 1991 and died last January. For 24 years he was the high court’s most passionate liberal. He was also the court’s resident curmudgeon, often poking fun at Supreme stuffiness. Now, even from his grave in Arlington National, Marshall continues to confound. Never before have a justice’s papers been so freely available to the public so soon after the justice left. And not since the release of “The Brethren” in 1979, coauthored by Bob Woodward, has there been such a fury over the court’s secrets....

A Certified Important Book you haven’t read: George Eliot’s “Middlemarch,” which is a source of shame. I know it’s superb, but I have always been daunted by this masterpiece. The book I most want my kids to read: “The Tower” by W. B. Yeats. They would learn, or at least glimpse, how magnificent poetry can be.

Set in the coastal fishing village of Sanavere, south of Miami, “Familiar Heat” centers around Faye Parry Rios, a young woman cursed with bad luck and blessed with gumption. Kidnapped and raped by bank robbers, then abandoned by her husband, Faye soon loses her entire personality to brain damage in a near-fatal car wreck. Her recovery is heartening but never sentimental–she is good but never too good to be true–because Hood has no use for movie-of-the-week heroics....

Possibly a lot–even if you’ve never set eyes on the drug. It turns out that one of Viagra’s most powerful side effects is being felt not in the bodies of men, but in homes and labs across the nation: it is sounding a wake-up call about sexual problems in women. Women’s gynecological health is routinely monitored through Pap smears and pelvic exams, and yet the closest most doctors come to asking about sex is “What kind of birth control are you using?...

In the late ’80s, Knipfel was studying philosophy at the University of Minnesota and trying repeatedly – and lamely – to kill himself: “Four years of philosophy might make you want to kill yourself,” he says, “but it’s not nearly enough to help you go through with it.” However, when an overdose of pills landed him in the hospital, he suddenly found himself a guest of the state in a locked ward....

After working 13 hours in a plant in Reynosa, Mexico, Sonia Rodriguez trudges through ankle-deep mud as she enters her ramshackle neighborhood in pitch darkness. She is paid $33 a week to assemble seat belts in a maquiladora, or assembly plant, owned by TRW Inc. She grimaces at what passes for a street and says, “This thing-what’s it called, free trade?-I hope it means they’ll pay me what they make in the United States....

In her new book “The Far-Farers: A Journey From Viking Iceland to Crusader Jerusalem,” former British journalist Victoria Clark draws thoughtful and subtle parallels between the beginning of the first millennium and the second. This account, an engaging blend of journalism and history, shows how the 11th century’s militant Christianity laid the groundwork for the later separation of church and state in Western Europe. It also shows how the crusaders’ anti-Semitism and demonization of Islam still haunt us today....

Without treatment, even prevention proves to be impossible. Effective prevention requires that individuals submit to testing for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and then to counseling and behavioral change if they are infected. But when treatment is not available, individuals shun testing. To be found HIV-positive is not a gateway to treatment, but a mark of certain death and therefore social and economic exclusion. It is estimated that perhaps only 5 percent of the 25 million or so in Africa who are currently HIV-positive even know that they are infected, and fewer than one in a thousand receive anti-retroviral treatment....

He’s bad. He’s batty. And (aieee!) he’s back. As a matter of fact, his decision to come back may be the most convincing proof of his battiness. Now that we’ve driven a stake through the greed-is-good ’80s, who wants another rich bloodsucker? Then again, no properly raised vampire would continue to lie low when so many pine so ardently for his return. Just listen to Helen Samaras, a 37-year-old travel agent in West Hempstead, N....

The 14th national Party Congress in Beijing probably won’t come up with an answer: the world’s biggest Communist Party (and one of the few left) can no longer ignore the ever-widening gap between its ideology and reality. In fact, this week’s session runs a strong chance of becoming China’s last ruling-party congress ever to call itself Communist. The label already seems spurious. State-owned newspapers constantly sing the praises of private entrepreneurs, and the country’s stock and real-estate markets are booming....

Reigning MVP Stephen Curry is now being recognized as the best player in the world, standing all alone as the highest rated player in the video game. MORE: NBA 2K16 review | Best start ever in NBA history Curry has been moved up a single point to 95 Overall, overtaking LeBron James who began the season as the top rated player in 2K16 but hasn’t budged off that initial 94 rating....

Recalling that in testimony on Capitol Hill last week, Blair was rueful: “He was excited about it; I was embarrassed.” Pearl Harbor Naval Station, headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command, has been so starved of modernization funds that it’s a period-film set. For most of the last half century, the Pacific Command was the military’s orphan child–deprived of money that went to Europe, front line of the cold war....

That’s the problem–and the reason RSI is the workplace’s most complicated and controversial problem. There’s nothing new about the phenomenon, of course. But it was back in the news last week when, in the face of intense political opposition, OSHA shelved plans to issue tough new regulations protecting workers from such injuries. Business execs cheered. Claims for repetitive-strain disorders cost employers some $100 billion annually, according to industry estimates, and the new regs would have sent that soaring....