Hurt by the recession, the G.O.P. 's host is fighting back It's a lunch-bucket town with a world-class symphony. A heavily black city with a black-run government, but an economy dependent on white business leaders. A community that prides itself on its race relations, yet a town where the underlying tensions could still cause another riot. And it's a Democratic town holding the Republican National Convention. With its many contradictions, Detroit defies labeling and upsets preconceptions. Self-styled sophisticates from elsewhere ...

School integration has vexed policymakers for more than half a century. The Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that schools can't keep kids out based on race. Then in 2007 it ruled that schools can't bring kids together based on race. After the court struck down two race-based integration schemes in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., attention turned to diversifying schools via students' household-income levels. Economic integration, a concept first floated by early public-school crusaders like Horace Mann, is ...

The image of seven corpses of young men and women who had been tortured, murdered and dumped in a car was depressingly familiar in drug war torn Mexico. But unlike thousands of other killings, one victim of last week's multiple homicide in the spa town Cuernavaca had a well-known father and his grief gained national attention. The journalist and poet Javier Sicilia led a march to commemorate the death of his son and friends, who appear to be ...

Two newlyweds are fighting for the dismissal of the justice of the peace who refused them a marriage license because they are of different races. "We've retained an attorney, and we're in the process of taking the next steps in order to make sure that (the justice of the peace) loses his job," Beth McKay told CNN's "American Morning" on Monday. She and her husband, Terence McKay, stepped into the national spotlight when Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace ...

The young child known as the "balloon boy" appeared sickly on NBC's "Today" show Friday morning. With his eyes adrift, 6-year-old Falcon Heene leaned his tiny head against his father before he vomited -- right in front of the cameras. The saga of the boy believed to be floating inside a giant silver balloon adrift over Colorado captivated a world audience. And the media spotlight has stayed on him. After the boy was discovered safe and sound in his family's ...

His predecessor left office to become President but Rick Perry has now become the longest-serving and most powerful governor in the history of the state of Texas. That is very much due to his use of wide-ranging appointment powers that have allowed him to dominate state boards, commissions and courts that control many aspects of daily life in Texas. But, in the past week, a brouhaha over his refusal to reappoint three members of an obscure forensic-science commission has ...

After actress Mackenzie Phillips spoke about her sexual relationship with her musician father, online and telephone calls to an anti-sexual assault hot line surged. Her interviews in the past few weeks brought a spotlight to an uncomfortable topic. Incest, a common but highly stigmatized form of sexual abuse, often leaves the victim ashamed, isolated and unable to tell others what's happening, because the perpetrator is someone related to him or her, mental health experts said. "For ...

Reality TV star Tila Tequila first came to fame via social networking, thanks to her popularity on MySpace. Later, she became known as one of the most voracious celebrity tweeters, boasting more than 242,000 followers on Twitter. But it was a more archaic form of technology -- a phone call to police -- that briefly quieted her social media activities and thrust the petite personality into the national spotlight after an allegedly violent encounter with an NFL player. ...

Lloyd Blankfein, the 54-year-old chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, is powerfully perplexed. In the past six months, his investment-banking and securities-trading firm has roared ahead in profitability by taking risks — that other firms would not — for itself and its clients in an edgy market. It has paid back the billions of dollars, and then some, of taxpayer money the government forced it to take last October; raised billions of dollars in capital from private investors, including ...

"Never wear your make up to bed," implore the beauty editors. But Dolly Parton was never one for following conventional advice on looking good. She sets her own standards, from her striking sculptured hair to the bright lashings of eyeshadow caked on a face that she has admitted in the past owes a lot to modern surgery. "I know I'm a bit over-exaggerated; I wear too much makeup, too much hair," the singer-songwriter and theme park co-owner told CNN's Revealed. ...