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Levitt wasn’t alone in expressing early doubt at the idea of pardoning Rich, who was charged with evading $48 million in taxes and trading with Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis. White House lawyers were concerned that the grounds for a pardon were shaky at best, and would only lead to trouble. In the end, Clinton ignored them all. But why? The former president, in New York exile, has insisted that he granted the pardon strictly on the “merits,” after hearing convincing pleas from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Rich’s well-connected attorney, former White House counsel Jack Quinn....

Suffice it to say that Benedict’s ride between public appearances is not quite your father’s Mercedes. The popemobile is a custom-built two-door Mercedes ML 430 that was donated to the Vatican in 2002. The car has no markings, except for the Mercedes logo on the front, the Vatican coat of arms on each door and a specialized license plate that reads “SCV 1,” an acronym for the Vatican’s name in Italian and the number of the Holy Father’s place in the church hierarchy....

Researchers at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin developed a program facilitating regular phone calls between a trained caller and primarily older adults who depend on the Meals on Wheels Central Texas (MOWCTX) program. Their study found that short, daily phone calls from trained callers can help reduce loneliness, depression, and anxiety, lead study author Maninder K. Kahlon, PhD, vice dean for health ecosystems and associate professor in population health at Dell Medical School, tells Verywell....

The Frye Retirement Community, with its elegant library and fireplace, hallways lined with Romare Bearden prints and services that include a personal trainer for each of the 150 residents, felt like the “ahead” Chambers had strived her whole life to attain. “I was so excited that someone in our community thought enough about the elderly to build a place like this,” says the 69-year-old former social-service aide. “I would pray, ‘God, you know I want this’....

But my excitement wasn’t very long-lived. For us, victory seemed very, very distant because Jerusalem was surrounded. From [Jerusalem’s] Old City I heard a Jewish girl’s voice on the radio saying, “We are going to surrender! Please tell us how to surrender!” It made me ill to hear such words. How can it be that our forces are surrendering? When a girl is saying those words it’s even more impressive....

Above all, such a design must transcend the euphoria based on personal relationships that surrounded the summit. With all respect for the subtlety of President Bush’s conduct, it is important to recall that we have been there before. In 1956, the first postwar summit between Eisenhower and Khrushchev was lauded by The New York Times as follows: “Other men might have played strength against strength. It was Mr. Eisenhower’s gift to draw others into the circle of his good will and to modify the attitudes if not the policies of the little band of visitors from the other side of the Elbe....

Suda reflects a worrisome trend in Japan; the automobile is losing its emotional appeal, particularly among the young, who prefer to spend their money on the latest electronic gadgets. While minicars and luxury foreign brands are still popular, everything in between is slipping. Last year sales fell 6.7 percent—7.6 percent if you don’t count the minicar market. There have been larger one-year drops in other nations: sales in Germany fell 9 percent in 2007 thanks to a tax hike....

So in 2002, A-B began buying local brands. In May it made a play for Harbin, which was part-owned by archrival Miller, triggering one of the first hostile-takeover battles in China. Beijing had set the stage when it recently made brewing one of the first sectors in China open to full foreign ownership. A-B won the bidding for Harbin when Miller bowed out last week, and now owns the brewer 100 percent....

No matter. Israeli leader Ehud Barak has already marked a new date on his calendar: Oct. 30. That’s the day Israeli lawmakers return from their summer recess for a fresh round of voting on a bill to bring down Barak’s government. If no peace agreement is reached by then, Barak, to ensure his political survival, will have to buttress his coalition with opponents of his peace offer to the Palestinians, including the ultra-Orthodox Shas party and possibly the main opposition, Likud....

In the current issue of the journal Science, a team at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center reports that a protein called FasL triggers severely damaged skin cells to commit suicide. In the study, mice with normal FasL killed off UV-damaged cells more efficiently than did mice without FasL. They also piled up fewer mutations in a gene called p53–a gene that, when mutated, can cause skin cancer. Though skin cancer rarely kills, patients who get it are 20 to 30 percent more likely to perish from other cancers....

Author of five seminal cookbooks–a sixth and self-proclaimed last, “Marcella Says…,” will be published this fall–Marcella turned 80 this spring, and her fans and her family have leapt at the occasion to honor her with parties at home and abroad, culminating with a grand fete in Verona. For 30 years Marcella has taught avid amateurs, first in Bologna, then in Venice, always with long intervals in New York. Five years ago she moved far from Venice’s vibrant Rialto market to Longboat Key, on Florida’s west coast, and, in a challenge we all face, now shops mostly at the local grocery store....

On the page, Carr is a bellicose companion. In person, he’s no less fervent but a lot jollier. Lean and longhaired, this boyish-looking 46-year-old makes it clear that it’s not easy being a Renaissance man. “People want one thing from each person and nothing else,” he says with a shrug. Carr’s reputation rests on “The Alienist” and its sequel, “The Angel of Darkness,” best-selling psychological mysteries set in New York City in the 1890s....

The first indicator is the national environment. Polls show voters of all kinds, especially late deciders, cite inflation, the generally poor state of the economy, and the rise in violent crime as the reasons they intend to vote. It’s hard to imagine any of those issues working to the benefit of the Democrats. The price of essentials like food, rising on an annualized basis of 8 percent, has outstripped wage gains....

The criminal was Pablo Escobar of Medellin, Colombia, who in 1989 was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s richest men. His business was cocaine. In conducting business he made war against his nation’s government, killing thousands–innocent bystanders, policemen, military officers and political leaders, including a presidential candidate. In an attempt to kill that candidate’s successor, he gave an underling a briefcase, directing him to throw a toggle switch that supposedly would activate a tape recorder to eavesdrop on the passenger seated next to him on an Avianca flight....

I watched in dismay as I helped the Ted Cruz presidential campaign, seeing Republican primary voters select Donald Trump out of a field of 16 viable candidates and make him president-elect. I signed an open letter committing to “working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted” to the presidency and wrote many articles lambasting Trump. I left the Republican Party on his nomination and voted for Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson in the general election....

The court order won’t solve Richmond’s long-term financial problems. Between 1987 and 1990, former superintendent Walter Marks racked up $60 million in debt as he turned the city’s failing schools around. “If we made one grave error,” Marks says now, “it was the amount of the salary increase we gave the employees.” The teachers demanded an 18 percent raise last year even as the district was asking the state for a $9 million loan to remain open for the school year....

Germany is bringing a founding father home. In the final days of World War II, as Soviet tanks rolled toward Berlin, German officers entered the royal vault at Potsdam, in what would become East Germany, and spirited the coffins of Frederick II and his father, Frederick William I, away to a Hohenzollern castle in southern Germany. Next week an antique train used by Kaiser William II will make the return trip with both casks aboard....

Under the Exchange Act, entrepreneurs and start-ups wishing to raise capital must either take their company public and file a registration statement with SEC or else qualify for a “private offering exemption.” Just this year, the SEC dramatically increased the amount of capital that companies can raise through crowdfunding and other types of private offerings. For corporate leaders and entrepreneurs, which exemption you decide to use will depend largely on how much capital you intend to raise:...

That is until Friday when the Yankees announced a ceremony to honor Rodriguez’s 3,000th hit from June. MORE: A-Rod’s journey from hero to anti-hero, in photos | The 3,000 hit club “I think it’s amazing, truly classy by the Steinbrenners and the Yankees’ organization,’’ Rodriguez said Friday, via the New York Post. Rodriguez’s 3,000th hit was a home run off Justin Verlander in Yankee Stadium. The Yankees eventually negotiated with the fan that caught the ball to return it to Rodriguez, which in itself was a far cry from the stance they took earlier in the season when they refused to pay Rodriguez any bonus money for his home run milestones after his year-long suspension for PED use....

They had been airlifted from Whiteriver, the largest settlement in the sprawling Fort Apache Indian Reservation 180 miles east of Phoenix. By the time they finally arrived, the mother was in severe respiratory distress, and the son was dead. This was mid-March and though the staff suspected they had COVID-19, it was still so new they weren’t quite sure how to treat it. “The mother was sick for a week, then went to a local clinic and within about two hours, she deteriorated and required a respirator,” recalls Dr....