Sunday’s election in Iraq drew a high turnout among the nation’s Shia majority and Kurds. As expected, the turnout among the Sunnis was low, and the challenge of bringing that disgruntled minority into the political process remains daunting.
Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi pronounced the election a major victory over terrorism. The hope now is [...]

The nation’s largest insurance brokerage house today became the latest major company to settle a lawsuit with New York’s crusading Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Marsh & McLennan agreed to pay 850-million-dollars to end an investigation into charges it took payoffs from insurance companies to steer clients their way.
Spitzer, a candidate for Governor of New [...]

Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, the maker of Pampers, Bounty, Tide and Crest, has offered more than $50 billion to Boston-based Gillette, Inc. for its Sensor and Mach3 razors and the rest of its business.
The Procter & Gamble-Gillette affair is a merger of consumer products giants that are getting increasingly squeezed by retailers. Their merger is [...]

Among the major news that made headlines this week:
1) Wednesday marks the deadliest day yet for U.S. troops in Iraq. A total of thirty-seven Americans perish, including 31 in a helicopter crash.
2) Preparations are underway for this weekend’s elections in Iraq.
3) Edward Kennedy becomes the first U.S. Senator to call for a timetable for [...]

Today, mixed news on the economic front were released. The swelling trade deficit took wind out of the U.S. economy and slowed growth to 3.1 percent during the fourth quarter of 2004. The outlook for all of 2004 was more encouraging. The economy grew 4.4 percent, its best performance since 1999.
Hear Greg [...]

Sherlock Holmes is the most famous sleuth in English fiction. And 118 years after his adventures with Dr. Watson first hit the magazine pages of Victorian England, Holmes remains an iconic character the world over.
From “A Study in Scarlet” to “The Musgrave Ritual” to “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” Holmes epitomizes the supreme man [...]

The elections in Iraq taking place on January 30, 2005 have been hailed by the Bush administration as the historic first step towards a free and democratic Iraq. Many analysts caution that even a high turnout will not quell the violence which has been steadily escalating.
Major issues include whether or not the Sunni minority [...]

Conservative marriage researcher, columnist and three-time On Point guest Maggie Gallagher found herself in a whirlwind of controversy this week when it was disclosed that she was paid to do work for the federal government. The Gallagher controversy follows last month’s revelation that conservative commentator Armstrong Williams was paid more than $200,000 to push President [...]

When well-known critic Stanley Crouch surveys today’s American culture, he sees a problem. He sees black music moguls celebrating a hip-hop gangland of larger-than-life thugs and hussies. He sees white writers fashioning an American fiction devoid of race and color, blacks turning their backs on education, and whites projecting a primitive tribalism on blacks.
Crouch [...]

Undersecretary Douglas Feith, Donald Rumsfeld’s top policy adviser, has said that he is stepping down from the Pentagon this summer.
Over the past four years, Feith has been harshly criticized for his role in the leadup to the war in Iraq. Most notably, he’s been criticized for misrepresenting intelligence showing connections between al Qaeda and [...]

Edward Kennedy today became the first member of the U.S. Senate to call for a detailed timeline for bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq. In a speech at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, the Massachusetts Senator labeled the U.S. presence in Iraq an occupation and drew parallels between Iraq and Vietnam.
“The U.S. [...]

“Moral Values” was the headline story the day after the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Religion was a big factor in the election throughout the entire campaign. George Bush talked frequently about his faith, while John Kerry talked about “loving thy neighbor” only near the end of the campaign.
Jim Wallis is an evangelical. He says [...]

January 27, 2005 marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the concentration camp that has come to symbolize the terror and genocide of the Holocaust.
Auschwitz is the site of the greatest mass murder in human history. More than 1.1 million people were taken to this camp, the majority of which died in [...]

President Bush held a last-minute press conference this morning in response to one of the deadliest days for American forces in Iraq.
A Marine helicopter crash took 31 lives, and 5 other troops died in insurgent attacks. At the press conference, Bush continued to pound on his theme of “freedom” reinforcing the message of his [...]

In his inaugural address President Bush mentioned it no less than 27 times. But just what does Bush mean, when he speaks of freedom?
Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson argues that Bush is invoking two definitions of freedom. One is the classic version of individual freedom embraced by most Americans today. The other one [...]

Today in Alabama the trial of Richard Scrushy, the former high-flying CEO of HealthSouth medical clinics, got under way. In a Birmingham courtroom, lawyers for both sides delivered their opening arguments. Scrushy is accused of orchestrating a $2.7 billion dollar accounting fraud. He could face 450 years in prison and up to $30 [...]

White House officials predicted today that the budget deficit will hit a new record of $427 billion. Next month, President Bush is expected to ask Congress for an additional $80 billion, mostly to fund the war in Iraq and bringing the total costs of the war to more than $200 billion by the end [...]

Harvey Pekar’s been called a schlep, a crank, and eternal pessimist. He is the creator of the autobiographical comic series “American Splendor,” about his 30 years as a file clerk at a V.A. hospital.
In 2003, Pekar’s life became the subject of the movie “American Splendor,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at [...]

It’s a dreaded sight for college-bound high school seniors: the thin envelope from the college of their choice. In many teens’ minds, rejection from a college represents failure on their part. Maybe if they had just studied a little harder or put a little more effort into that essay…
But former Boston Globe [...]

The next time high school students sit down and take the SAT exam, things are going to be different. Beginning in March, there will be a new writing section, harder math, grammar, and no more analogies.
What won’t change is the controversy. Since the SAT was first introduced in 1926, educators, students, and parents have [...]

Late night television icon Johnny Carson died yesterday after a long battle with emphysema. He was 79 years old.
Carson began his career in radio, and moved into television in the ’50s as the new medium took off. In 1962, after hosting several comedy shows and game shows, he was tapped to replace Jack [...]

The U.S. is at once the most modern and the most traditionalist society in the developed world, claims British scholar Anatol Lieven. In a new book, Lieven explores American nationalism and finds two competing impulses at work: the high ideals of liberty and a darker, angrier strand.
In a historical survey that moves from the [...]

In a setback for medical research in the United States, researchers have announced that all the country’s federally approved lines of human embryonic stem cells are contaminated with a molecule from mice. If eventually used for patient therapies, they could provoke an immune reaction that would destroy their ability to deliver hoped-for cures for diseases [...]

Muslims are Europe’s fastest growing population. The estimated 18 million Muslims are often living in frustrated communities that are not assimilating into the larger populations for various economic and cultural reasons.
Young people growing up in this setting are a ripe source for recruitment by radical Islamic groups. Unless more is done to bring Muslim communities [...]

The theory known as the Big Bang has won over the imagination of everyone from cosmologists to elementary school children. It offers an explanation of how something could come from nothing, with a large body of evidence to support it.
The scientists who have ruminated about the universe’s creation include some of the biggest luminaries of [...]

In his inauguration speech, Bush laid out an aggressive world view, urging Americans to follow him in a global crusade against tyranny. The Democrats, reeling from last November’s election losses, now appear as resistant as a car full of crash-test dummies.
The Bush administration has managed to frame the national dialogue as it sees fit, [...]

As George W. Bush prepares to serve his second term as U.S. President, his watchers have a better sense of the person leading the American nation.
But a lot could change. The nation is embedded in a foreign war. Questions about Bush’s foreign policy remain, just as he puts forth an ambitious domestic agenda.
What does Bush’s [...]

President George W. Bush, with his hand on the Bible, was sworn back into the Oval Office today by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Bush starts his second term with a clear election victory behind him, a Republican House and Senate, and with a legacy to shape.
In his 21-minute inaugural speech, Bush emphasized his leadership during [...]

Washington, D.C. is busily preparing for President Bush’s inauguration tomorrow. Streets have been closed, manhole covers have been welded shut, and miles of steel fencing and concrete barriers have made the nation’s capital look like a city under siege.
The marching bands are rehearsing on Pennsylvania Avenue. Armies of protestors are plotting their strategies. Bush [...]

Harvard University president Larry Summers stirred up controversy last week when, at an invitation-only economic conference, he questioned whether the current shortage of elite female scientists might be due to “innate” differences between men and women.
Top female scientists have expressed outrage at his comments. Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Standing Committee on Women lambasted [...]

After a few more hours of grilling, Condoleezza Rice received the approval of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee today, paving the way for her confirmation by the full Senate as Secretary of State tomorrow. Only two of the Committee’s 18 members voted against Rice’s nomination: former Presidential nominee John Kerry and California’s [...]

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports in this week’s New Yorker that the Pentagon is conducting covert operations in Iran. Publicly, President Bush has been urging diplomacy, but privately, Hersh writes, the administration has been looking at more aggressive paths to target and take out Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The Pentagon has called Hersh’s report “riddled [...]

Condoleezza Rice has come a long way from segregated Birmingham, Alabama. She has been serving as National Security Advisor in the last four years, and is expected to serve as the 66th U.S. Secretary of State during Bush’s second term.
In her confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations committee today, Rice opened with a [...]

Today in Toulouse, France, with the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and Spain looking on, the European consortium Airbus rolled out its latest design — a mammoth, double-decker airliner that can seat up to 800 passengers.
Its wings alone are big enough that seventy cars could park along them. And the company’s expectations for the [...]

Well-known legal scholar and federal judge Richard Posner begins his new book “Catastrophe: Risk and Response” by recounting a succession of worst-case scenarios: a deadly pandemic; an asteroid colliding into the earth; a lab experiment gone awry, producing a lethal new germ; and even an omnivorous nanomachine.
Posner warns that science fiction, where catastrophic [...]

There was music that said “stand up,” charismatic DJs, and direct calls for real equality. Black radio during the civil rights movement played a key role in the struggle. In some cases that meant gospel songs, in other cases, R&B with chart toppers like “People get ready” or “keep on pushing.”
From a very [...]

With two weeks to go until Iraq’s January 30th elections, the situation on the ground is grim. Today, gunmen kidnapped a Catholic archbishop and killed at least 22 people in a series of brazen attacks. General George Casey, the top U.S. general in Iraq, is predicting more violence on election day.
Despite all the violence, Iraqi [...]

The virtual world of video games is big, bold, and often bloody. Last year alone, game sales topped $10 billion dollars, more than book sales or Hollywood. Whether gamers use X-Box or Playstation, they could be leading a gangland war in “Grand Theft Auto,” destroying alien invaders in “Half Life 2,” or creating [...]

European space probe Huygens has landed on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan after a seven-year journey, a space official said today.
Just hours ago, the probe Huygens sent back the first-ever pictures of Saturn’s biggest moon Titan. Scientists hope their new data from Titan will shed light on the origins of life here on [...]

It is a grim psychological and evolutionary reality for powerful women struggling to find their powerful men. That men prefer to marry down rather than up. That, as a recent University of Michigan study found, college-age men looking for long-term relationships would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses.
The study’s findings reaffirm a very [...]

It has been a huge week for the computer company Apple. The company announced that its profits last quarter quadrupled as compared to the same quarter last year, mostly due to high Christmas sales of its I-Pod music player.
Today, Apple’s stock price surged near its all-time high. And on Tuesday, Apple unveiled the [...]

Ten years after the Contract with America, we look back on its impact and legacy with a veteran Capitol Hill watcher.
Guests:
Gail Chaddock, covers Congress for The Christian Science Monitor

It has been ten years since former House Speaker Newt Gingrich spearheaded the Republican revolution that led to the signing of The Contract with America. Now, he is criticizing President George W. Bush from the right and hinting at his own run for the White House.
In a new book, Gingrich also makes the case for [...]

A photograph of Prince Harry sporting a Nazi swastika at a costume party is raising eyebrows and painful memories in Britain.
Guests:
Jennifer Hughes, reporter The Financial Times

Jeffrey Sachs, U.N. special adviser to Secretary General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Project, has just returned from Africa and says the continent is trapped in poverty. Not by any fault of its own but by geography, climate, disease and isolation.
Sachs says it will take a flood of foreign aid, a “big push,” to [...]

On January 12th, 1888, a sudden severe storm swept into the upper U.S. prairie states. It had been an unusually mild morning and most people were out and about. Then, temperatures dropped 18 degrees in just 3 minutes, and a blinding mix of hurricane-force winds and horizontal snow created near-zero visibility. By the [...]