Immortalized in Miguel Cervantes’s 17th century classic Spanish novel, the Man of La Mancha Don Quixote turns 400 this year. The mad windmill-battling knight errant has inspired and brought solace and humor to dreamers around the world.
Cervantes’s great work has been celebrated in over 100 translations, in movies and a smash Broadway musical. [...]

Thirty years ago, on April 30, 1975, Vietcong tanks smashed through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon. Washington’s South Vietnamese allies fell and U.S. helicopters retreated with the last loads of Americans from atop the U.S. embassy.
58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War, a war that they failed. More than a million [...]

Tonight, President Bush steps up to an East Room podium and faces the White House Press Corps in a rare prime time press conference to discuss two important priorities for the White House — Social Security and energy.
On Sunday, Bush will end his 60-day, 60-city tour to sell his plan to overhaul the social security [...]

When two students went on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School in 1999, the tragedy sparked calls for gun control legislation nationwide. Most recently, there have been shootings at courthouses in Georgia and Texas, and latest school shooting occurred on Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota last month.
But times appear to have changed. Now, [...]

For many Americans, the Vietnam War ended 30 years ago this week with the fall of Saigon. But for the South Vietnamese who fought against the North, the years following the American withdrawal brought humiliation and oppression. South Vietnamese soldiers were forced to enter re-education camps where they were subjected to hard labor and endured [...]

In Washington today, House speaker Dennis Hastert told Republicans to retreat in their battle with Democrats and let an Ethics Committee probe of the Majority Leader Tom Delay move forward.
This would mean reversing some of the rules changes on ethics passed in the House in January by Republicans. Just yesterday President Bush praised Delay [...]

A few days after the 2004 Presidential election, Eli Pariser, executive director of the liberal activist group Moveon.org, sent an email to the group’s 2.5 million members. John Kerry may have lost, Pariser wrote, but “the current leg is just beginning…now it’s our party…We bought it, we own it, and we’re going to take it [...]

The House of Representatives today took up legislation to add further restrictions for teen abortions. In most states, girls under age 18 already face parental involvement laws.
Similar legislation has passed the House three times before. The one time it reached the Senate floor, it got fillerbusted. This time, the outcome could be different.
Linda Feldmann, White [...]

Former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges has covered armies on the march around the world. Recently, the sound of Christian soldiers caught his ear, and he followed them to Southern California at the National Religious Broadcasters convention.
At the convention, says Hedges, the fiery theme was not just support for judicial nominees, or creationist [...]

After months of debate in the public forum, on the air waves, on talk shows and town hall meetings, the fight over Social Security entered a new phase this morning as the Senate Finance Committee began grappling with real proposals to make the system solvent, long-term.
The hearings waded through four different plans, and looked at [...]

Forty-million Americans have no health insurance. Millions more are one pink slip away from losing coverage. The reasons are as diverse as the people themselves. But what is clear is that the current healthcare system leaves everyone at risk and it doesn’t take much to be pushed over the edge.
In a new book, authors Susan [...]

A U.S. Marine from New York could face the death penalty if he is found guilty of the premeditated murder of two Iraqi detainees. The case against Second Lt. Ilario Pantano, a former Gulf War sergeant and father of two, opened today in a military courtroom at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
Pantano claims self-defense, saying [...]

The economic promise of the Internet is ultimately about how many people can use it and how fast. The transformational promise of the Net is deeply linked to high-speed, broadband access, and all the services and applications that make it possible.
Once a leader in Internet innovation, the U.S. is now falling behind Japan and other [...]

Last week, the New York Stock Exchange agreed to a merger last week with a company that would push it toward electronic trading. It looks like it may receive another bid soon, from a friend of ousted former New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso.
Michael Mandel, chief economist of Businessweek magazine, talks about what [...]

Economist and University of Chicago professor Steven Levitt was recognized in 2003 as the country’s most outstanding economist under the age of 40. He has little tolerance for conventional wisdom. Rather than look for answers in the same old places, he digs deep into the data.
In his new book, “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the [...]

The battle over federal judicial nominees reached nearly biblical proportions last weekend as conservative evangelical leaders gathered to proclaim their faith under attack. The event, dubbed “Justice Sunday: Stop the Filibuster Against People of the Faith,” was broadcast across the country and speakers left no doubt about what they saw at stake.
But when the giant [...]

Among the major news of this past week:
1) Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany is elected Pope Benedict the Sixteenth.
2) Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich votes with Democrats to force a delay on President Bush’s nominee as UN Ambassador, John Bolton.
3) The House approves President Bush’s Energy Bill.
4) Vermont Independent Senator Jim Jeffords announces he will [...]

On November 8, 1991, basketball great Ervin “Magic” Johnson announced he was infected with the HIV virus. In 1993, tennis legend Arthur Ashe died of AIDS. In both cases, the rumor mill ran wild with questions about the sexual preferences of both men.
The participation of gays in sports is a silent reality, with a [...]

Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th terrorist behind the attacks of 9/11, pleaded guilty to all six counts of conspiracy against him. He could face the death penalty.
Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, is the only person charged in the United States in connection to the Sept. 11th attacks. He was arrested a month [...]

Amtrak faces a rough ride on the rails. The Bush administration wants to end its more than $1 billion annual subsidy. Its 20 Acela high-speed trains which operate along the Northeast corridor have been placed out of service until this summer.
Amtrak still struggles with rundown trains, rickety tracks, and constant delays. It does not [...]

Sake, the strong Japanese wine made from rice, has become an increasingly common selection on menus throughout the United States, even as its popularity plummets in Japan.
American sake imports jumped 30 percent from 2003 to 2004, part of a steady increase over the past decade. Much of the rice wine’s success in the U.S. [...]

The demand for seafood has never been greater. Evidence is everywhere — from an explosion of sushi bars, to all-you-can-eat shrimp bonanzas at restaurants across the U.S. To meet that demand, the fishing industry has gone high tech and in high gear, but it’s emptying the oceans far faster than fish species can recover.
Research [...]

Today in Iraq, a commercial helicopter crash killed 11 people, including six Americans. Also, over the past two months, around 60 corpses have been retrieved from the Tigris River south of Baghdad. Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, said the bodies were murdered hostages. Most of the victims, according to police statistics, died of gunshot wounds.
Patrick McDonnell, [...]

In 2001, Latinos became the fastest growing minority group in America. At 39 million, Hispanic-Americans form 13 percent of the U.S. population. In another 50 years, that number is expected to grow to 25 percent.
In his new book, “Translation Nation,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Hector Tobar says that America’s growing Hispanic population is changing what it [...]

The White House isn’t backing down on efforts to get John Bolton approved as the next US Ambassador to the United Nations. White House spokesman Scott McClellan accused Democrats today of fabricating charges and making unfound allegations against the embattled nominee.
Those comments come a day after a scheduled vote on Bolton was delayed by [...]

New York’s Boss Tweed was big, bold and brash. His crimes were breathtaking. Harper magazine illustrator Thomas Nast drew an oversized Boss Tweed, with an enormous carrot on his shirtfront, handing out thousands of dollars to New York’s poor from the city’s treasury. The caption: “Let’s blind them with this, and then take [...]

NASA announced today that its first space shuttle flight since the 2003 Columbia disaster will be delayed for at least a week. The new launch date for the space shuttle Discovery is set for May 22, 2005. NASA had hoped to send Discovery on a 12-day delivery and repair mission to the international space [...]

Decades after the worst-ever nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl and the tragedy at Three Mile Island, nuclear power is back in vogue.
Seventeen countries around the world depend on nuclear power for at least a quarter of their electricity. China is talking about building dozens of new plants. Finland, the first western European country to [...]

Issues related to the so-called “culture of life” have dominated American domestic politics over the past several months: from the Terry Schiavo case to the war in Iraq to battles over judicial nominees.
Massachusetts resident Tiziana Dearing has been frustrated with the rhetoric she has heard from both sides of the recent debates over life issues.
In [...]

Amtrak pulled the only high-speed Acela train still operating over the weekend out of service today. Last Friday, it had suspended Acela service between Washington and Boston after inspectors found problems with the trains’ brakes.
Amtrak’s woes come as the Bush administration weighs whether to force Amtrak into bankruptcy, which would trigger a massive restructuring [...]

A new wardrobe, shiny convertible, steamy affair — sound like symptoms of a man experiencing a midlife crisis. Or it could be a middle-aged woman unmoored after decades of trying to juggle too much at work and at home.
When Wall Street Journal’s “Work & Family” columnist Sue Shellenbarger wrote about her mid-life crisis [...]

At the Vatican today, first there was a wisp of white smoke from the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel. Then, the bells of Saint Peter’s Basilica rang out. Moments later, Cardinal Medina Estevez of Chile appeared at the Vatican balcony and announced to the thousands in Saint Peter’s Square and the world, “We have [...]

Violence in Baghdad over the weekend claimed the life of one of the true heroes of the ongoing conflict in Iraq. 28 year-old humanitarian worker Marla Ruzicka was killed Saturday when a car bomb exploded near her as she drove along the perilous road leading to Baghdad’s Airport.
Ruzicka had been working to help civilian [...]

Around 9 a.m. on April 19, 1995, a bomb ripped through the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and shattering America’s sense of security.
Six years later, on September 11th, 2001, national focus shifted from the likes of Timothy McVeigh to foreign terror threats. But it was the 1995 Oklahoma [...]

The Sistine Chapel doors were sealed today, as the 115 cardinals of the Catholic Church gathered for day one of the Vatican Papal Conclave. Founded on centuries of tradition and veiled in mystery, the ancient rite of choosing the next Pope began with the Dean of the College of Cardinals reading the oath of [...]

Among the major news that made headlines this past week:
1) The Senate Foreign Relations Committee grills President Bush’s controversial nominee to UN Ambassador, John Bolton.
2) President Bush meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Crawford, Texas.
3) The House of Representatives passes a bankruptcy bill that will make it harder for consumers to clear their [...]

In 1877, Thomas Edison launched a technology boom that would revolutionize the way the world listened to music and ultimately revolutionize music itself.
Edison created the phonograph, which he imagined would be a dictation machine. Instead, it would become the first generation of technology to bring Americans music.
From the phonographs of the 1920s to the MP3s [...]

This week, NBC rolled out “Revelations,” a six-hour miniseries about an astrophysicist, a nun, and their globe-trotting study of the apocalyptic conditions.
TV networks always broadcast their blockbusters during the all-important sweeps periods. Right now, executives are banking on religion to bring in the big bucks.
It could be a safe bet. The influence of Christian [...]

Relations between China and Japan have turned sharply sour recently over oil rights in the East China Sea and a Japanese history book that has sparked demonstrations in China. Over the weekend, anti-Japanese rallies turned violent when protesters hurled bottles at the Japanese embassy in Beijing.
Alexandra Harney, South China correspondent for The Financial Times [...]

Philosopher and jazz musician David Rothenberg traveled the world to get at the heart of the mystery of bird singing.
He wanted to understand the science and the aesthetic behind the song of such birds as the white-crested laughing thrush, the Albert’s lyre-bird and the green catbird. He even took his clarinet with him and played [...]

For thirty years, biologist David Campbell has been exploring the lush vistas of the far western Amazon. He has traveled hundreds of miles into the rain forest to survey every living plant in a land so rich that an area of less than 50 acres contains three times as many tree species as in all [...]

The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to permanently repeal the estate tax yesterday — for the fourth time since 2001. Now, the measure is headed to the U.S. Senate, and with a few tweaks, it is expected to pass.
Republicans say the estate tax is a death tax, and want it gone for good. Democrats [...]

Today in Washington, at a heavily attended question-and-answer session with reporters, House Speaker Tom Delay brushed aside questions about his ethical conduct and political future. “I’m not here, he said, “to discuss the Democrats’ agenda.”
Gebe Martinez, Congressional reporter for the Houston Chronicle, reports on the latest allegations against Tom Delay.
Guests:
Gebe Martinez, Congressional reporter for the [...]

A previously unknown poem by playwright Tennessee Williams has been discovered in a blue exam booklet that Williams used for his Greek final in 1937, when he was a student at Washington University in St. Louis.
The poem reveals the despair and failure that Williams felt at age 25, 8 years before he would find success [...]

The year was 1948. “Give Em Hell” Harry Truman was president. India’s Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi. Former State Department official Alger Hiss was indicted on perjury charges after denying he passed documents to Communist spies.
Also in 1948, three rising stars on the U.S. political scene, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and [...]

Health authorities in at least 18 countries, including the United States, rushed today to destroy samples of a deadly flu virus that were accidentally sent to laboratories around the world.
The flu virus, known as H2N2, killed as many as 4 million people during the deadly 1957 Asian flu pandemic, and fears of a similarly devastating [...]