— A high school football star was stabbed and later died in a fight with parking attendants over whether something was stolen from his family's car during his graduation ceremony, police said. His father was charged Wednesday with assault stemming from the argument. Isayah Muller, 19, a star running back who led his team to the Public Schools Athletic League championship, was rushed to a nearby clinic Tuesday by his family and girlfriend and was later ...

If Private Jeon is celebrating inside, his disciplined military exterior doesn't show it. Dressed in khaki with black, wide-rimmed spectacles, the 22-year-old is due to finish his 21 months of military service next month, an obligation for almost all of South Korea's 25 million men. "It's good experience for my job," Jeon says during an educational tour of the Demilitarized Zone, the barb-wired no-man's land that has divided the Korean peninsula for 58 years and counting. "Frankly," ...

— Steve House can't stop thinking about the day in 1978 when he says he helped bury toxic Agent Orange at a U.S. military base in South Korea, hauling rusting drums to a ditch from a warehouse that soldiers called "voodoo land." After decades of silence and countless hours of suffering that he links to exposure to the dangerous herbicide, House is one of three former American soldiers whose accounts have sparked a joint U.S.-South Korean investigation. The ...

When her husband Dominique Strauss-Kahn was preparing to run for President of France five years ago, Anne Sinclair told a Paris newspaper that she was "rather proud" of his reputation as a ladies' man, a chaud lapin nicknamed the Great Seducer. "It's important," she said, "for a man in politics to be able to seduce." Maybe it was pride that inspired French politicians and International Monetary Fund officials to look the other way as the rumors about "DSK" ...

— The maid came from one of the world's poorest countries and worked long hours trying to support the teen daughter she raised alone. The penthouse suite at the Sofitel Hotel was just another room; she had no idea the man she says tried to rape her was a famous French politician. The man, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, remained jailed under a suicide watch Wednesday as a lawyer for the woman sought to rebut whispered allegations that her charges ...

COVER STORY Love 'em or hate 'em, they are a national mania Cat: One Hell of a nice animal, frequently mistaken for a meatloaf. —B. Kliban, cartoonist Muhammad cut the sleeve from his robe rather than disturb his friend, asleep on the Prophet's gown. Samuel Johnson daily pampered his spoiled companion Hodge with meals of fresh oysters. Victor Hugo cherished Gavroche. Cardinal Richelieu left a generous legacy for the 14 he owned. Napoleon is said to have broken into a ...

"I've certainly striven to conduct myself as my mother would wish me to," said William Marshall Boyle to a Senate investigating committee. Many citizens mistakenly assumed that this statement by the chairman of the Democratic National Committee was a piece of pious patter. But Bill Boyle was in sober earnest. His mother is still honored in Kansas City as one of Boss Tom Pendergast's best precinct workers of the 1920s. Friends of the family, discussing Bill Boyle, say somewhat ...

The afternoon was sultry, and along the deserted block of neat brick row houses in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia, an ominous calm had descended. Suddenly the thwack of rotors broke the silence. A blue-and-white Pennsylvania State Police helicopter arced in low over the roof-line. It made several passes over the street, then hovered 60 ft. above the two-story home at 6221 Osage Avenue. In the helicopter cabin, Lieut. Frank Powell, chief of Philadelphia's bomb- disposal unit, hefted ...

Could there at last be a flicker of good news from Japan? On Saturday, Japanese officials announced that last-ditch efforts to stabilize the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that was damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami might be achieving a modicum of success. Engineers said they had connected a power cable to the plant, possibly allowing pumps to begin flowing water into cooling pools surrounding dangerously overheating nuclear fuel rods and spent fuel containers. The ...

As China marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC and the 30th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening policies, there are countless examples of how the country has changed over the decades. In the sphere of foreign media coverage, perhaps the most obvious came last week, when 300 news executives arrived in Beijing for the country's first World Media Summit, held Oct. 8 through Oct. 10. President Hu Jintao addressed the gathering, saying China would ...