Like running backs and child actors, rappers usually do their best work in the first year or two of their careers. The inevitable decline is brought on not by bum knees or embarrassing arrests--in rap there's no such thing--but by something far more mundane: words. Jay-Z's aptly titled classic What More Can I Say is more than 800 words long, and when it's over, you know everything you could possibly need to know about him. Now multiply What More ...

To get in shape for her October wedding, Dawn-Samantha Cahill, 25, a production coordinator in New York City, tried every exercise routine she could think of. But the upended positions that yoga required made her feel self-conscious. Running on a treadmill was a bore. And lifting weights was just too difficult. Frustrated, Cahill started overeating instead of exercising, and her weight, on a petite, 5-ft. 2-in. frame, ballooned to 212 lb. Cahill was nearly ready to give up, ...

When Michael Dukakis was asked about news stories casting doubt on George Bush's World War II heroism, he said, "I don't think that kind of thing has any place in the campaign . . . You don't fly 58 missions without enormous courage and tremendous patriotism." Not long afterward, Bush said of Dukakis, "What is it about the Pledge of Allegiance that upsets him so much?" There is no mistaking Bush's point. It has nothing to do with the constitutional ...

Twas election night all over again. The halls were decked, the pundits were quacking, Democrats said Florida was still too close to call. By the Sunday 5 p.m. deadline, the counting still wasn't done, but in a dramatic signing ceremony at 7:30, secretary of state Katherine Harris certified George W. Bush the winner by 537 votes. But even as Bush asked Dick Cheney to head a transition team and named Andrew Card his chief of staff, the Democratic faithful were ...

CAMPAIGN James Johnson kept his glacial blue eyes glued to the motel-room TV set, his mouth slightly open as if in wonder. Walter Mondale's campaign chairman had been in the state capitol in St. Paul earlier that day, of course, but he wanted to relive that poignant experience. He switched around among all three networks, nodding in silent approval as anchormen described Mondale's running-mate selection as historic and unprecedented. The phone broke into Johnson's reverie: it was his boss calling. ...

As a parody of democracy, the scene had a certain dramatic charm. Until they were ordered into silence, hundreds of colorfully dressed spectators in the galleries of the Philippine National Assembly cheered and booed passionately as politicians on the turquoise-carpeted floor below walked through their parts. One at a time, brown envelopes containing vote totals from each of the country's 147 voting centers were presented to the legislators for inspection. Tallies were read aloud, and results posted on green tote ...

Soupy Sales, a comedian from the golden era of television, died Thursday. He was 83. The funny man seen many times on popular game shows died at a New York hospice, said Paul Dver, Sales' longtime friend and manager. "We have lost a comedy American icon," Dver said. "I feel the personal loss, and I also feel the magic that he had around him being gone. That's a much more severe loss than a loss of a friend." Sales was ...

Sen. John McCain and his running mate Gov. Sarah Palin are on a mad dash to blunt Sen. Barack Obama's surging momentum and hold the states that have traditionally voted for Republicans. As Obama seeks to expand his electoral playing field in hopes of racking up a decisive win, McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin headed south to states President Bush carried handily in 2004 and ones that haven't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in more than four decades. ...

Los Angeles firefighters and city crews worked for several hours Tuesday to rescue one of their own: a 22-ton firetruck that was nearly swallowed by a water-logged sinkhole. The incident happened after four firefighters took the truck to the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Valley Village, where flooding had been reported after a water main break, just before 6 a.m. PT. After seeing running water in the road, a fire captain instructed the rig's driver to back up and had ...

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Saturday, thanking his nation's fighting forces for a job "well done." "This has been the most difficult summer in Afghanistan because the Taliban have tried to prevent the elections taking place and I think our forces who I've been meeting today have shown extraordinary courage during this period," Brown said in a televised interview, taped in Afghanistan and aired in Britain. Brown dropped by Camp Bastion in Helmand ...