James Phung saw Phone Booth before you did. What's more, he saw it for free, in the comfort of his private home-screening room. Phung isn't a movie star or a Hollywood insider; he's a junior at the University of Texas who makes $8 an hour at the campus computer lab. But many big-budget Hollywood movies have their North American premieres in his humble off-campus apartment. Like millions of other people, Phung downloads movies for ...

They are strangers, but they already know one another's stories. So when Mona Rahman, 24, tells the other five people at a New York City dinner table about how her superstrict parents never let her sleep over at friends' houses, there are chuckles of recognition. There are equally empathetic, if more sober, nods when Grace Chang Lucarelli, 32, speaking in a soft Texan drawl, recalls "people making fun of me" because she was one of the few Asian Americans in ...

Despairing Republican friends have been asking me what I think we should do to rebuild the GOP and begin our certain and inevitable comeback. My answer disappoints them: "Build an ark." I say this because I've made a career out of counting votes, and the numbers tell a clear story; the demographics of America are changing in a way that is deadly for the Republican Party as it exists today. A GOP ice age is on the way. Demographic change ...

Muammar Gaddafi's options for a peaceful exit may have finally run out. For the second time in seven weeks, South African President Jacob Zuma on Monday failed to persuade the Libyan leader to abandon his 42-year rule. Gaddafi's refusal to heed the advice of longtime friends in the African Union raises the likelihood that his reign will end either with his indictment by the International Criminal Court in The Hague or with his death in ...

Simran Kaur got married last December in what she terms a "medium-sized Punjabi wedding". "There were only a thousand guests," she says amidst the colour, bling and music of her wedding video. "And the four days of ceremonies before the wedding were attended by only relatives and close family friends," says the 26-year-old homemaker from Chandigarh, the capital of the prosperous state of Punjab, adding, not without a hint of irony, "which made up some 250 people." Weddings ...

Lee Kuan Yew towers over other Asian leaders on the international stage, yet he comes from one of Asia's smallest countries. A champion of Asian values, he is most un-Asian in his frank and confrontational style. Lee loves Singapore but has relatively few close Singaporean friends or confidants. He is a man of great intelligence, with no patience for mediocrity; a man of integrity, with an relentless urge to smite opponents; a man who devours foreign news ...

What are the sources of Protestant-Roman Catholic tension in the U.S.? Last week the Jesuit weekly America listed three areas of friction in a lead article by Editor in Chief Thurston N. Davis. The sore points as Jesuit Davis sees them: BIRTH CONTROL. "Some Protestants speak of birth control as a positive virtue. They are hurt and perhaps humiliated that their code of personal morality in this matter is held to be grossly wrong by their Catholic friends. The ...

The five flagpoles that stand in front of the Star Ferry terminal at the tip of the Kowloon peninsula in Hong Kong have long been a popular meeting place. It was at this familiar spot 20 years ago that democracy advocates sold commemorative items to raise money for the victims of the June 4 crackdown at Beijing's Tiananmen Square. I bought one: a four-inch plastic replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue that had been erected at the square. For ...

Dawnmarie Souza's comments on her Facebook page didn't win her any points with the boss, but the rest of us owe her a debt of gratitude. In a rare test of old law on a new medium, she helped us understand just how little the online world differs from the land of bricks and mortar. Souza's career as a paramedic at American Medical Response of Connecticut Inc. may not have been too bright even before she called ...

Between the Vermilion and Illinois rivers, 100 miles southwest of Chicago, is the glacier-born wilderness of caves, forests and canyons called Starved Rock State Park. There, according to Indian legend, a band of Illinois was besieged by an enemy tribe. Driven to the highest cliffs, they fought bravely until the last starved Illinois perished. There too, last week, along the snow-carpeted trails that weave into the panorama of canyons and frozen waterfalls, wandered three vacationing women. And there they died at the hands of a killer or killers ...