"They own. you know, the banks in this country, the newspapers. Just look at where the Jewish money is." That heedless remark, evoking the cliches of hoary antiSemitism, was the worst-aimed bomb of four-star Air Force General George S. Brown's 33-year military career. When it exploded last week, President Ford called Brown, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, into the Oval Office for a ten-minute reprimand. New York Republican Senator Jacob Javits demanded an investigation. Democratic Senator William ...

Nixon launched it, Carter killed it and Reagan resurrected it. In its infancy, the Air Force's B-1 bomber was a quick and dirty military metaphor — Republicans wanted to buy weapons to defend the nation from the Soviet Union, and Democrats didn't. Now it could become a different kind of symbol: the Air Force is thinking of retiring its total 66-plane B-1 fleet to hit budget targets set by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Top Air Force officials ...

JAI Bangla! Jai Bangla!" From the banks of the great Ganges and the broad Brahmaputra, from the emerald rice fields and mustard-colored hills of the countryside, from the countless squares of countless villages came the cry. "Victory to Bengal! Victory to Bengal!" They danced on the roofs of buses and marched down city streets singing their anthem Golden Bengal. They brought the green, red and gold banner of Bengal out of secret hiding places to flutter freely from buildings, while ...

The newest technologies--computers, genetic engineering and the emerging field of nanotech--differ from the technologies that preceded them in a fundamental way. The telephone, the automobile, television and jet air travel accelerated for a while, transforming society along the way, but then settled into a manageable rate of change. Each was eventually rewarded more for staying the same than for radically transforming itself--a stable, predictable, reliable condition known as "lock-in." Computers, biotechnology and nanotech don't work that way. They are ...

Three weeks ago, headlines announced that the U.S. had detected a mysterious "dark" satellite wheeling overhead on a regular orbit. There was nervous speculation that it might be a surveillance satellite launched by the Russians, and it brought the uneasy sensation that the U.S. did not know what was going on over its own head. But last week the Department of Defense proudly announced that the satellite had been identified. It was a space derelict, the remains of an Air ...

With a military stalemate increasingly likely in Libya, U.S. and European politicians have been eyeing an oil blockade against Muammar Gaddafi as a way of breaking his determination to keep fighting and avoiding a drawn-out war. But the West might want to rethink that idea: Five weeks after NATO air strikes began pummeling his regime's military installations, Gaddafi appears to have adapted to the ongoing conflict, in part by tapping a dependable spigot of fuel for his ...

The war in Libya is not going well. Muammar Gaddafi shows no sign of giving up power. His forces' siege of the rebel-held city of Misratah has killed upwards of 1,000 people, including two Western journalists. One month in, NATO's air campaign is plagued by halfhearted commitment and intracoalition blame-passing. The rebels on whose behalf the U.S. and its allies intervened have failed to advance much beyond their strongholds in eastern Libya. Only a few inveterate optimists ...

Take a look, if you can stand it, at video footage of the World Trade Center collapsing. Your eye will naturally jump to the top of the screen, where huge fountains of dark debris erupt out of the falling towers. But fight your natural instincts. Look farther down, at the stories that haven't collapsed yet. In almost every clip you'll see little puffs of dust spurting out from the sides of the towers. There are two competing explanations for these puffs ...

We'll never know what it was like to be aboard Air France Flight 447 as it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on May 31, apparently killing all 228 aboard. For now, the closest we may get is listening to the passengers on a similar Airbus 330 jet whose flight computer put it into an uncommanded dive over northwestern Australia last October. Qantas Flight 72 had been airborne for three hours, flying uneventfully on autopilot from Singapore to Perth, ...

Call it the Air Wars. For the past 18 months, the city of London has failed to meet air-quality limits set by the European Commission . Earlier this month, Brussels granted the U.K. capital a temporary extension to bring levels of a certain type of dangerous pollutant called PM10 to within a safe standard. But facing a $480 million fine should the city fail to comply, London's mayor has launched a novel challenge to the EC, saying that London's pollution is actually ...