Wearing a black gown and a black-veiled mitre, there arrived in Manhattan last autumn His Grace the Most Reverend Theodosios Abourjaily, Archbishop of Tyre & Sidon, Metropolitan of Judadeh and personal delegate of Alexander III, Patriarch of Antioch in the Syrian branch of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Church of North America, with 60,0000 members, had been without a head since 1934, when Archbishop Victor and his two immediate subordinates died. To select a successor, Archbishop Theodosios was dispatched to the U. S. by the ...

No one in Zagazig wants to talk about what happened last week. The hundreds of railway workers who maintain the old, trash-ridden tracks and trains in this Nile Delta town whisper hurriedly about a strike that briefly disrupted rail traffic across the country of 80 million. But the workers won't give their names or discuss it at length for fear of retribution from the soldiers and security forces that so swiftly put an end to it. And ...

Anaheim, Dallas, Raleigh, Tampa: To the 34 million citizens of Canada, the country that invented the game of hockey, the Stanley Cup belongs in these cities about as much as tropical beaches belong in Saskatoon. Yet, in the almost two decades since the last time a Canadian team won the Cup — Montreal defeated Wayne Gretzky and the Los Angeles Kings in the 1993 Finals — these southern and western American cities have all hoisted the Cup ...

"Names make news." Last week the following names made the following news: George V. A motor ambulance suitable for transporting His Majesty to the Sussex seaside where he will recuperate was driven into the courtyard of Buckingham Palace, last week, and later the Royal physicians announced that they had "thoroughly tested its suitability." Paul von Hindenburg, President of Germany, eyed last week, for the first time in his life, a cinema. It was shown for his especial benefit at ...

Last Monday, the Navy was the hero across America, for the exploits of its SEALs in bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. This Monday, the sea service was zero in certain quarters for saying it will permit same-sex marriages within its hallowed chapels. It marks the first of what is likely to be many thunderclaps associated with the lifting of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on openly gay men and women serving in the U.S. military. Navy ...

The last time you had sex, there was arguably not a thought in your head. O.K., if it was very familiar sex with a very familiar partner, the kind that—truth be told—you probably have most of the time, your mind may have wandered off to such decidedly nonerotic matters as balancing your checkbook or planning your week. If it was the kind of sex you shouldn't have been having in the first place—the kind you were regretting ...

So obscure, so ignominiously in the shadow of Dictator Benito Mussolini, is bantamweight King Vittorio Emanuele III that news last week that he had actually done something important came to most Italians as a pleasant shock. His Majesty, after deliberating off & on for 22 years, finally handed down his decision as arbiter between France and Mexico in the forgotten matter of minute Clipperton Island, 700 miles off the Mexican shore, annexed by France in 1857, seized by Mexican Dictator ...

The farmers of western Niger normally spend the first few months of every year filling their mud-brick storage bins with grain. But last November's harvest was a bad one, and many of the bins this year are only half-filled or empty. "It's not normal," says Amadou Salou, a farmer in the town of Male Haoussa, a few hours' drive north of the capital, Niamey. Sheltering under a tree from the scorching mid-day sun with other village elders, Salou sets out ...

At a San Francisco event last September, Research in Motion — the company whose BlackBerry phones rank among the most iconic gizmos of all time — announced its first tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook. RIM played a splashy video about the device, detailed its features, and issued a press release laden with words like "unmatched," "uncompromised," and "unique." The one thing it didn't do was show off a working PlayBook — presumably because the tablet wasn't yet in ...

Liz, a Shi'ite in her late 20s, is afraid to leave her house. She says that the last time she went out, government-hired thugs stopped her car at one of the many checkpoints that litter Manama, the capital of Bahrain. They pulled her out, asked for her identity card and tried to ascertain one thing: whether she was Sunni or Shi'ite. "It's pure racial profiling," she says a few days later, sitting in her family's living room in ...