When you pop a cork this holiday season, there's a good chance that the bubbles in your glass won't be French. Hard times, it turns out, can sometimes be good times — especially if you're a producer of Italian sparkling wine, or spumante. While the recession has taken some of the fizz out of France's champagne industry, in Italy, the bottles of bubbly have been flying off the shelves. According to the Italian farmers' association Coldiretti, exports ...

It seemed, on the face of things, to make sense: The first gate of the Morganza Spillway opened on Saturday afternoon, sending 10,000 cubic feet of Mississippi River water churning south toward the Atchafalaya Basin, all part of a concerted effort to help relieve pressure on burdened levees protecting Baton Rouge and New Orleans. By late Sunday morning, a total of four had been opened. But Bayou residents can be forgiven for wondering just how well-conceived the Army ...

Not for many years has a Christmas season begun with so many tidings of spreading discomfort and lack of joy about the U.S. economy. Already racked by a devastating double-digit inflation, the nation is now also plunging deeper into a recession that seems sure to be the longest and could be the most severe since World War II. Consumers who a few weeks ago worried mostly about rising prices now fear for their jobs and incomes as well. For many ...

If it's the first weekend in May, it must be Marvel superhero time. Spider-Man and its two sequels, plus both Iron Man movies and the Wolverine prequel, have all kick-started the summer movie season in burly style. Now it's Thor's turn. The Norse god — first Marvelized in a 1962 comic book — introduces what is conceived as a zillion-part movie series about the Avengers team of Marvel stalwarts. Captain America, impersonated by Chris Evans, gets his ...

A troubling story that has not gotten much attention this election season — or any recent one, for that matter — is why a certain group of roughly 5.3 million Americans won't be allowed to vote. It isn't because they're underage or non-citizens or mentally incompetent. It isn't because they're unregistered or physically unable to get to the polls. It isn't even because they're limping around with a chronic case of political apathy. • Why Can't Felons Vote? Once they've served their time, ...

An uneasy, familiar feeling came over me when I watched last week's premiere of Top Chef Masters. Afterward, I had it out in a snarky IM exchange with CNN's Kat Kinsman, but my heart wasn't really in it. There was something melancholy for me about seeing the Top Chef franchise at its lowest ebb, its already ludicrous premise stretched beyond the breaking point. It made me realize how much Top Chef inexplicably matters to me. And it ...

The first Tuesday of his second season on the air was a big day for Will Truman. Will, the male half of NBC's Will & Grace, went on a date, after spending last year setting an endurance record for getting over a painful breakup. The date was with a hunky bookstore clerk we saw for all of five teasing seconds, but it was a date nonetheless. His other accomplishment: the Top-20 W&G beat its straight-couple neighbor, ABC's Dharma & Greg, ...

No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth. Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us. It certainly looked that way last week as the atmospheric bomb that was Cyclone Larry--a Category 4 storm with wind bursts that reached 125 m.p.h.--exploded through northeastern Australia. It ...

Taping of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" reunion special, scheduled for last week, has been postponed as the cast deals with the death of Kandi Burruss' former fianc, Ashley "A.J." Jewell, an NBC Universal spokeswoman told CNN Monday. The show is now winding down its second season on the network, and the two-part episode was expected to air on October 29 and November 5. Cast member and purported "sixth housewife" Dwight Eubanks told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he was "shocked" ...

David Beckham looks set to rejoin AC Milan on loan after the vice-president of the Serie A giants claimed it was "very probable" that a deal would be reached to secure the services of the soccer icon. Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder Beckham sparked controversy last season when he extended his loan with Milan until June and missed the start of the Major League Soccer season in the United States. When he returned to play for the Galaxy he received a ...