Six miles high, flying through the midnight sky in his white, Israeli-made jet, the inexhaustible Reverend Jerry Falwell was on his way to Boston, scheduled to appear the following morning on a television show. During the trip, however, an urgent telephone message arrived: there was a suicide emergency at Falwell's center for alcoholics in Lynchburg, Va. A distraught veteran was threatening to blow his head off with a loaded pistol unless Falwell came back and talked to him. The would-be ...

Among the top Nazis, Heinrich Himmler was the leading racial fanatic. As Reichsfuhrer and SS chief, he personally set up the Lebensborn program in 1935 to turn the German population into a superrace through selective breeding. Thousands of carefully selected German women were encouraged to have intercourse with SS men, who were presumed to be among the racial as well as the political elite. Once pregnant, the women were signed into one of twelve special maternity centers, where they received lavish medical and personal care. When one ...

Several years ago, executives with Singapore's major private banks came to the government with an enviable problem. Asia was minting so many rich people, and the lucrative business of managing their wealth was growing so rapidly, that there weren't enough skilled private bankers to go around. The talent shortage was so acute that banks reportedly were hiring local hairdressers and car salesmen and turning them into private bankers. They were also stealing employees from rival banks. "There were a lot ...

The heart, Woody Allen said, wants what it wants. For the producers of the ABC reality show The Dating Experiment, that was a problem. The heart of one of their female participants did not want what they needed it to want. She disliked one of her suitors, but it would make a better story if she liked him. So they sat her down for an interview. Who's your favorite celebrity? they asked. She replied that she really loved Adam Sandler. ...

Rising alarm at the spread of radiation throughout Japan's water supply has not deterred one of its major trading partners from going ahead with its nuclear ambitions. Indonesia's National Nuclear Energy Agency, also known as Batan, announced on Monday that it had narrowed down the list of bidders for a feasibility study it plans to conduct for two nuclear reactors. The winner of the tender, either PT Surveyor Indonesia or PT Wiratman Associates, will be decided by the end of April, says Batan spokesman ...

Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struck a rare conciliatory note Thursday, saying that the Islamic republic was ready for nuclear cooperation with Western powers."We welcome the exchange of fuel, technical cooperation and construction of power plants and reactors and we are prepared to cooperate (in those areas)," he said. Iran shocked the world in September by revealing the existence of a previously unknown nuclear plant near the city of Qom. The IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, sent a team of ...

For the 18th year in a row, the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday voted to condemn the 47-year embargo against Cuba by the United States."You can't read a novel, but you could read a manual about procedures or about the airplane," the former Boeing 767-400 pilot said. "You can't read a newspaper. You can't use a laptop. That's strictly prohibited." However, some airlines make documents, including manuals, available only in digital form and provide company laptops for pilots to ...

There is a well-known saying in Afghanistan: "You can rent an Afghan, but you can't buy him.""There's been an amnesty program for low-level Taliban in place for many years now and thousands of people have taken advantage of it," he said. "So this is not entirely a new idea. The idea of bribing people, local guys, to come over. ... It's one of the most cost-effective ways to get people to lay down their arms, either to negotiate a peace ...

United Nations-backed nuclear inspectors on Sunday visited a newly disclosed Iranian nuclear facility near the city of Qom, Iranian media has reported.That proposal calls for low-enriched uranium produced in Iran to be sent abroad for further enrichment and then returned for use in medical research and treatment. Tehran is studying the draft proposal and will have an answer next week, Iranian diplomat Ali Asghar Soltanieh said on state-run Press TV. Iran informed IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei that it is ...

Two days after negotiators reached a draft agreement over Iran's nuclear activities, Tehran left it unclear Friday whether it would ultimately sign on. If Iran agrees to the proposal -- reached Wednesday at the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog -- it could serve as a major step toward resolving an international showdown. The draft stemmed from talks among representatives of the United States, France, Russia, the United Nations, and Iran. ...