Turmoil in the oil-rich Middle East, combined with the nuclear crisis in Japan, has caused a lot of experts to recalculate the global energy algorithm for the future. But people need energy now, and with the ravenous economic growth of China, India and Brazil, demand has grown even more urgent. The problem is that the clean fuels of the future--solar and wind power--are not even close to scale: only about 1% of U.S. electricity needs is supplied by the combination ...

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 ...

THE LAW HAS ALWAYS MADE ROOM FOR KILLERS. SOLDIERS KILL THE nation's enemies, executioners kill its killers, police officers under fire may fire back. Even a murder is measured in degrees, depending on the mind of the criminal and the character of the crime. And sometime this spring, in a triumph of pity over punishment, the law may just find room for Rita Collins. "They all cried, didn't they? But not me," she starts out, to distinguish herself from her ...

The U.S. invasion of Haiti would commence not with the blazing of guns but with the quiet ripples of Navy SEALS making their way ashore. Under cover of darkness -- a key ally in the Pentagon's invasion plan -- they would drift apart and stealthily make their way to the country's major airport, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Their mission: to make sure no surprises were in store for the thousands of U.S. combat troops that would follow. "One truck ...

For 13 chilling days in October 1962, it seemed that John F. Kennedy and Nikita S. Khrushchev might be playing out the opening scenes of World War III. The Cuban missile crisis was a uniquely compact moment of history. For the first time in the nuclear age, the two superpowers found themselves in a sort of moral road test of their apocalyptic powers.The crisis blew up suddenly. The U.S. discovered that the Soviet Union, despite repeated and solemn denials, was installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. An American ...

Heavy gun battles raged around the last bastions of Ivory Coast strongman Laurent Gbagbo as the United Nations warned both sides to rein in their soldiers; the countdown to Gbagbo's exit began. The boom of large weapons rang across the city as forces loyal to President-elect Alassane Ouattara targeted the two official presidential residences and the state broadcaster. The state broadcaster changed hands between the pro-Ouattara Republican Forces and Gbagbo's Republican Guards at least twice overnight, while ...

Many large modern cemeteries store data on the identity of remains via computer and keep track of grave locations with the aid of satellites. The previous leadership at the cemetery blew unknown millions trying to develop a similar system, but ended up just handing money to favored contractors who did little in return, according to an Army investigation last summer. As a result, Arlington tries to keep track of around 30 burials a day on pieces of ...

The 10-day-old coalition waging military strikes against Muammar Gaddafi's forces converged in London on Tuesday for the first time since it began bombing Libya on March 19, in order to thrash out how the campaign could edge, push or coax Gaddafi out of power after nearly 42 years of stifling dictatorship. In a frenzied round of closed-door meetings, hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron, officials from across Europe and parts of the Arab world attempted to ...

When Allied troops stormed the Normandy beaches in 1944, American correspondents and photographers were on hand to tell the story. But two weeks ago, when U.S. Marines and Rangers led the charge into Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, not a single journalist accompanied them. The Pentagon- sanctioned pool of reporters did not arrive on the scene until four hours after the fighting began, and they were unable to file their first dispatches until six hours after that. Worse, ...

WITH an almost manic abruptness, the nation seemed, as Yeats once wrote, "all changed, changed utterly." With the killing of four Kent State University students by Ohio National Guardsmen last week, dissent against the U.S. venture into Cambodia suddenly coalesced into a nationwide student strike. Across the country 441 colleges and universities were affected, many of them shut down entirely. Antiwar fever, which President Richard Nixon had skillfully reduced to a tolerable level last fall, surged upward again to a ...