The most popular foreign resident in the tiny Turkish port of Kusadasi is a lean, blond, blue-eyed American known locally as Kemal Baldwin. Kids follow him through the streets, and adults come to him for solution of all kinds of problems. In a country where the word Cyprus has sent U.S. prestige to its lowest point in 20 years, the 5,000 citizens of Kusadasi think that if Americans are like "— Baldwin they cannot be all bad. Yet Baldwin ...

People in Port-au-Prince call Junon Brutus "Soeur Junon" , describing her as a prophet and a messenger from God. Her crowning moment thus far came on Feb. 12, when Brutus, 42, stepped center stage to face thousands of arms waving in unison, reminiscent of the pulsating energy during Carnival performances. The gathering was not a celebration but a lamentation marking the one-month anniversary of Haiti's earthquake — a disaster that many in Haiti believe Brutus predicted. But ...

It was exactly ten minutes after seven on Thursday evening, June 12, that Mrs. Lela Bass, 73, stood combing her long gray hair in the backyard of her white frame house in Port Neches, Texas. Casually she turned and saw for the first time an eerie outline etched in the plastic of her backdoor screen: a bearded, long-haired man with a halo, looking east toward a fig tree in the yard. It was, she was certain, Jesus Christ. Neighbors spread ...

On a hot Sunday night, a car pulls over in the port of Odessa, southern Ukraine. About 30 girls swarm around it, posing in the glare of its headlights. The driver's window rolls down and a female pimp — known by the girls, almost lovingly, as a mamachka — leans inside to negotiate a price. Within a minute, two girls have hopped into the car and the rest go back to chatting and dragging on their cigarettes. ...

On the afternoon of April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant snapped. A striking figure with his long blond hair and milky skin, he had just eaten lunch at a caf within the historic site of Port Arthur, a former prison in Australia's island state of Tasmania. Described later by his sentencing judge as a "pathetic social misfit," the 28-year-old then reached into his sports bag and, in the manner that others might pull out a sweater, withdrew two ...

Love them or hate them, when it comes to remakes, it seems the only thing people can agree on is that they more often than not stir controversy. The fall festival season has seen its own showdown of late over "Bad Lieutenant Port of Call: New Orleans," Werner Herzog's remake of the Abel Ferrara original. The Herzog film premiered at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month and also played at Toronto. Ferrara hasn't disguised his distaste over the re-imagining ...

As we began our journey, I was so nervous I could barely keep my footing. One of the women had made Kool-Aid and measured out enough Valium in it to keep the children calm. As we trekked up the side of the banana field, my heart was beating wildly. Someone is going to see us, I kept thinking. I prayed to God to please get me to the top of the hill, and when I put the other foot down ...

Two George Washington Bridge security guards photographed sleeping on the job have been fired, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. A bicycle tour operator who commutes daily over the bridge from New Jersey to New York snapped photos of the two guards on different occasions, and the photos were published on a New Jersey local news Web site. In one set of photographs by commuter Joey Lepore, taken during a Wednesday rush hour ...

The agency that owns the space where the World Trade Center towers stood is freeing itself of the term "freedom" to describe the signature skyscraper replacing the buildings destroyed on September 11, 2001. The change from Freedom Tower was revealed Thursday at a news conference where the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced the signing of the first commercial lease in the building to a Chinese company. The building is expected to be completed in late 2013. ...