When Paula Tuffin and her family moved to Essex Fells, N.J., a village of huge homes and hilly landscapes, they were unbothered by the fact that they were the only black folks for miles around. But soon Tuffin, a divorce mediator, began to worry. Her children Drew, 7, and Sarah, 4, were well accepted by their white friends, but they were barely being exposed to the black community at all. Thus Tuffin got together with 40 other black mothers, many ...

Burma has been rendered in journalism, activism and art as a country of plain dichotomies: good vs. evil, liberty vs. suppression, the saintly Aung San Suu Kyi vs. the brutal monolith of the military junta. By its very premise, Burma Soldier, which airs this evening on HBO, muddies this picture. The documentary's subject, Myo Myint, is a former soldier who gave his adolescent years to the regime but came in adulthood to join the democratic opposition against it. ...

The numbers say Thor won the weekend, again taking moviegoers to that Norse altar in the sky and winning the North American box office with $34.5 million, according to early studio estimates, for its second week at the top of the heap. But the snickering Bridesmaids led by Kristen Wiig may have the last laugh. The R-rated sisterhood comedy pulled in $24.4 million, nearly twice what its home studio, Universal, had cautiously predicted. Asked to pay to ...

On Feb. 13, the day before she gave the first of two damning testimonials to Congress, Enron vice president Sherron Watkins spent the afternoon in a cluttered conference room in the Rayburn House building on Capitol Hill. It was a cram session of sorts, a final chance for Watkins, her attorney and congressional staff members to review the dozens of subpoenaed documents she would be quizzed on the next morning. As they ate cold pizza, someone drew her attention to ...

The Force is definitely with Travis Ho. Like millions of computer-science students before him, the 19-year-old Singaporean's lifelong fantasy has been to work for Lucasfilm, the empire launched 30 years ago by George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars. Ho, however, did not have to journey to a galaxy far, far away; Lucasfilm came looking for him. Eighteen months ago, the digital-art powerhouse launched its first overseas studio in Singapore. The 170 employees come from 33 nations, and together they ...

David Koresh -- high school dropout, rock musician, polygamist preacher -- built his church on a simple message: "If the Bible is true, then I'm Christ." It was enough to draw more than a hundred people to join him at an armed fortress near Waco, Texas, to await the end of the world. The same message tempted Koresh to entertain a vision of martyrdom for himself. He would die in a battle against unbelievers, then be joined in heaven by ...

On a bright September afternoon last week, the mothers of Chicago's South Side brought their children to a vigil for a dead boy they had never met. They wanted their kids to see the scrawny corpse in the loose tan suit lying in a coffin, next to his stuffed animals, finally harmless. The big kids dragged the little kids up to look at the stitches on his face where the bullets fired into the back of his head had torn ...

For months, the Washington press corps has referred to the House Republican freshman class as a monolithic entity. Depending on whom you ask, all 87 newbies are either heroes or extremists, holding Republican Speaker John Boehner's feet to the fire over conservative causes. They forced their leadership to pursue to $61 billion in cuts to the 2011 budget, far more than the $34 billion originally proposed. Their perceived intransigence helped House Speaker John Boehner milk $10 billion more ...

The baby now named Tessa Leavitt was born in a motel bathtub on the night of June 18, 2005. Her mother cleaned her, breast-fed her and cut the umbilical cord herself. The next day, the young Hispanic woman swaddled the infant in a white towel and took her to Fire Station 15 in Whittier, Calif., where she rang the doorbell and told the firefighters, "I want to give up my baby." When the paramedics arrived 30 minutes later, she put the ...

The United Nations' dramatic military operation in the Ivory Coast civil war came at a crucial juncture in the struggle between the country's two Presidents. Over the weekend, forces supporting Allassane Ouattara, the man recognized as president by most of the international community, arrived at Abidjan, the city where both Ouattara and his rival Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent, were holed out. The Ouattara troops had marched in from their northern strongholds, where they had been rebel troops ...