Posts

Zakaria: What made you get involved with the issue of energy security? Smith: The country’s continued and increasing dependence on imported petroleum has created an enormous economic and national-security risk probably second only to terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Our country has not developed any cogent energy policy for a number of years. Second to terrorism? Is it that prominent a security challenge? We ran simulations that showed quite dramatically that very small reductions in supply end up having enormous implications for the U....

In an announcement last week that impressed people in and out of Hollywood, Creative Artists Agency head Michael Ovitz said he had hired Robert Kavner, an executive vice president of AT&T, to help him chart the voyage into the multimedia universe. Like many a move by Ovitz, this one should set Hollywood scrambling to catch up. Kavner, 50, is a former chief financial officer for AT&T who’s spent the last three years heading its new-business ventures....

Several months earlier Gehry got so anxious about how the place would sound that he called Salonen at home one evening and asked to meet him at the unfinished hall right away. (Gehry worked closely with the Japanese acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota, who also collaborated with him on the much-praised concert hall at Bard College in New York, which opened this spring.) Salonen asked the concertmaster to come with his violin, and the man played a little Bach for them in the dim and dusty hall....

P&G’s market share fell 9 percent, even though its Pampers brand is still the market leader. The category was up 3 percent, despite stiff competition from Dove and new brand Lever 2000. Market share down 8 percent. P&G says goodbye to the White Cloud brand. Up 7 percent. Crest is still king, but Arm & Hammer is making inroads.

True, there was nothing civilized about the tantrum thrown by Culkin’s father and manager, Kit Culkin, during post-production. He demanded that scenes be reshot, that Kevin Kline’s brief narration be eliminated, even that changes be made in the music. Otherwise, he threatened, the boy would not promote the movie: no interviews, no talk shows, none of the star appearances that help sell tickets. “The Nutcracker” is a cash cow for most ballet companies–that’s why American Ballet Theatre, fighting its way back from what had been a $5....

Noel, the Sixers’ center, fouled Bledsoe, the Suns’ point guard, hard enough Friday night to earn a flagrant 1 foul. Now the context: Bledsoe said earlier in the week that Kentucky could beat the winless Sixers. (Side note: Bledsoe and Noel both played at Kentucky.) MORE: Are Sixers an NBA team? | Calipari: UK would get ‘buried’ by pros | Carter-Williams: ‘Losing sucks’ Bledsoe said after the game that a Sixers player told him he would get knocked down....

Schmid, 47, is not only wealthy. He’ll also look you in the eye and say so. “I always wanted to be free and independent,” he explains. “That’s what being rich means to me.” In Germany, such talk is as new as the idea of a former hockey coach becoming a tycoon. And it marks a psychological shift that may be even more significant in the long run than such vaunted reforms as telecom deregulation or the coming of the euro....

The experiment, published in the journal Science, quickly accentuated the divide between those who believe cloning should be outlawed entirely and those, including most scientists, who support banning it for reproductive purposes but not for medical research. Hwang emphasized that he undertook his work solely to advance therapeutic cloning. Proponents say the procedure is markedly different from making carbon copies of human beings. “There is no implantation; there is no pregnancy,” says Daniel Perry, head of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research....

With Deng on his deathbed, Jiang is pulling his own strings –and shedding light on China’s mysterious process of transferring power. Once dismissed as a political lightweight, the 68-year-old former Shanghai mayor has pushed aside cagey rivals and elevated members of his so-called Shanghai faction. Jiang is poised to become China’s next paramount leader – despite his lack of revolutionary credentials and a reputation as a pliant bureaucrat. Already he is China’s top diplomat, confidently attending international forums like last week’s VE Day celebrations in Moscow....

These are the early scenes of a nascent antiwar movement. Activists have quickly mobilized behind several causes: averting war against the already afflicted people of Afghanistan, fighting the erosion of civil liberties and protecting U.S. Arabs and Muslims against hate crimes. Protesters are organizing teach-ins, vigils and demonstrations. Last Thursday’s rally at Berkeley was part of a nationwide effort involving 146 campuses in 36 states. At Union Square in New York City, a spontaneous memorial blossomed into a monument to peace before it was taken down by the Parks Department....

Middle-class wealth fell 40 percent in the Great Recession of 2008. Nearly a decade and a half later, it is barely back to its 2001 level. Many Americans struggle to start a business, buy a home, send kids to college, or save for retirement. Upward economic mobility used to be common; now it is a crapshoot. Only half of Americans born in the 1980s earn more than their parents did at the same age, compared with 92 percent of Americans born in 1940....

Webb is seen as a moderate or even conservative Democrat, but this was a populist speech that quoted Andrew Jackson, founder of the Democratic Party and champion of the common man. The speech represented a return to the tough-minded liberalism of Scoop Jackson and Hubert Humphrey, but by quoting Republicans Teddy Roosevelt (on “improper corporate influence”) and Dwight D. Eisenhower (on ending the Korean War), he reinforced the argument that President Bush had taken the GOP away from its roots....

Northward in Kowloon, modern container ports—their giant cranes lined up like robotic elephants on parade—load waiting freighters. Barges scurry like worker ants, flags from every port of convenience flap in the breeze and jetfoils buzz back and forth from Macau. For decades, as East Asia’s export economies rose to pre-eminence, the scene has grown more frenetic year by year. But sometime soon—or perhaps that day has already passed—the vast natural harbor that first attracted British opium traders to this spot on the South China Sea in the 1840s will reach its own peak, and start to fall....

Until recently, diagnosing the condition required a liver biopsy–not a procedure you’d undertake lightly. But Miscoi didn’t have to go that route. Scientists isolated the gene for hemochromatosis a few years ago, and developed a test that can spot it in a drop of blood. Miscoi tested positive, and the diagnosis may well have saved her life. Through a regimen of weekly blood lettings, she was able to reduce her iron level before her organs sustained lasting damage....

Simeon has pledged to improve his peoples’ lives within 800 days–not to mention join NATO by 2004, and the European Union not long after. It’s a tall order. Bulgaria has fallen far behind its more successful East European neighbors, chiefly by lagging on reform. After 10 years of mismanagement, unemployment is close to 28 percent–rising to 70 percent in rust-belt areas like the steel town of Pernik. Seventy percent of the population lives below the official poverty line....

The team said it wants to move into the proposed facility at Howard Terminal, about six miles northwest of the Coliseum, in 2023. MORE: A’s extend contracts of Beane, Forst, Melvin “This is bigger than baseball,” A’s team president Dave Kaval said, per the East Bay Times. “It’s not just a ballpark — it’s something that could have a lasting impact here in Oakland and keep the A’s in Oakland for another 50, 100 years....