It's the recurring nightmare of high-minded modern parents of daughters. You ask your relatives to lay off the pink pinafores at the baby shower. You give your daughter Legos and soccer balls, not Barbies. You encourage her to play fire fighter and immerse her in Dora the Explorer videos. Then one Halloween rolls around, and your empowered, self-confident budding Marie Curie tells you that she wants to be...a princess. Call it nature or nurture, harmless fantasy or insidious indoctrination, ...

I was a 37-year-old senior vice president in charge of the consumer-products-and-publishing division at Nickelodeon, the children's cable channel, in my office celebrating with a few colleagues the announcement of a huge, groundbreaking deal with Sony to create and market home videos of our hit shows, such as Rugrats and Ren & Stimpy. The phone rang. My assistant shouted, "Oh, man — it's Sumner! On Line 1!" Sumner Redstone, that is, then as now the chairman and majority owner ...

U.S. forces in Afghanistan have opened a fact-finding investigation into the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier in the hands of the Taliban, CNN has learned. The investigation, informally called an AR 15-6 after the Army regulation that governs such matters, was confirmed by three military officials. The Defense Department announced Bergdahl disappeared from his combat outpost sometime after he finished his guard duty shift on the night of June 29. Military officials have said he ...

A lumbering grey shadow can often catch your eye as you drive along one of Bangkok's most polluted and congested streets, Sukhumvit. If this were not Bangkok, you would think you'd had one too many beer Singhas, but in this city of contradictions, anything seems, and often is, possible. And so it is that spotting a huge elephant, dodging the tuk-tuk motorcycle rickshaws, the ubiquitous taxis and blizzard of traffic is nothing out of the ordinary. I remember seeing my ...

Seconds after the news first hit the airwaves, your own shock merged with everyone else's in the immediate vicinity. And you could feel it rolling through the rest of the planet like a runaway diesel. (CNN) -- Seconds after the news first hit the airwaves, your own shock merged with everyone else's in the immediate vicinity. And you could feel it rolling through the rest of the planet like a runaway diesel. As with most things you neither ...

When the sun went down, their voices did not. "Allah O Akbar!" the crowds on the tops of building chanted over and over. Cell phone footage shows the nighttime scene in Tehran, Iran, which was sent to CNN's iReport. As the camera pans with a jerk from building to building, protesters whistle and shout loudly while cars are heard honking in support. The phrase, which means, "God is great" has become a rallying cry for protesting Iranians ...

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, flashing a broad smile, declared victory Tuesday in the country's 25-year civil war against the Tamil Tiger rebels. "We are celebrating the defeat of terrorism," he said in a nationally televised speech before parliament. "We have won and restored democracy in the country." Rajapaksa announced that Wednesday would be a national holiday, to celebrate the end of a war that has led to an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 deaths. Meanwhile, a rebel Web site said ...

The Sri Lankan military said Monday that they killed three top leaders of the Tamil Tigers and the son of the rebel group's founder. CNN was unable to confirm the account because of safety and access reasons. The deaths were the result of continuing armed encounters with the last remnants of the rebel group, who are now cornered in a small stretch of land in the country's north, according to the military. The offensive against the rebel group is in ...

The latest video from Somalia's al Qaeda-backed Al-Shabaab wing is as slickly produced as a reality TV show but with a startling message -- complete with a hip-hop jihad vibe. "Mortar by mortar, shell by shell, only going to stop when I send them to hell," the unidentified voice raps on the video, which runs at least 18 minutes. The video also shows a man reported to be Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, dubbed "The American" by al Qaeda. He apparently is ...

The most amazing part of the exchange to me is that I didn't go into the East Room intending to ask President Obama about AIG. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The most amazing part of the exchange to me is that I didn't go into the East Room intending to ask President Obama about AIG. After frantic preparation for the prime-time newser with several colleagues, especially lead CNN White House producer Tim McCaughan, I had several provocative questions in my ...