The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad doesn't make threats lightly. And as they confronted the uprising in the town of Jisr al-Shughour, government security forces were blunt, according to the medical staff in area's small hospitals and the local Red Crescent outpost there. Saving a wounded protester's life could cost them their own. As a result, private medical clinics closed and doctors in the northern Syrian town's public hospital fled. Of 200 Red Crescent volunteers, only ...

Just off the coastal juncture of Virginia and Maryland lies small, picturesque Chincoteague Island. Sportsmen know it as a good place to go for fishing and duck-shooting. And once a year, during its Volunteer Firemen's Carnival, Chincoteague stages the East's only wild horse roundup. Last week came this "Pony Penning Day." No one knows where Chincoteague's wild horses came from. Natives say they have been there some 250 years, like to believe them descendants of horses which swam ashore from a ...

It may be hard for Americans to fathom a world in which corporations, instead of merely lamenting the shortage of skilled labor, volunteer to train vast numbers of the non-college-bound. Oh, yeah, and to pay them a bundle along the way. But under Germany's earn-while-you-learn system, companies are paying 1.6 million young adults to train for about 350 types of jobs, ranging from industrial mechanic to baker to fitness trainer. And the trainees' average annual salary of $19,913 helps explain ...

As big as a football field and nearly as empty, Barack Obama's re-election headquarters looks like a start-up gone wrong. Wires sprout like weeds from the carpeting, legions of bookshelves stand empty, and the swing-state maps hastily pinned to the wall are freebies from the AAA auto club down the street. In one room that could fit hundreds of people, just a few dozen sit at long desks. Most don't look old enough to buy a beer. ...

Charles Rangel --Democratic Congressman from New York and Korean War vet Staying the course in Iraq means increasing our troop strength, and, not surprisingly, recruitment and re-enlistment levels are down. But proposed enlistment bonuses and other economic incentives will not make the military any more attractive to upper-middle-class young people. Increasingly we will be a nation in which the poor fight our wars while the affluent stay home. To correct the disparity among those who serve, South Carolina Senator Fritz ...

Have you seen a shift in the past 20 years in the public's attitude toward service? I think so. I hope so. Many schools include a service project as part of their curriculum, and many corporations have in-house projects for their employees or give them time off to do volunteer work. There's a greater understanding about the importance of giving back. Presidents Carter, Clinton and Bush recently feted you for making volunteerism important. What was that like? First, it was a lot of fun to ...

A People's History of Sports in the United States By Dave Zirin The New Press; 268 pp. The Gist: In A People's History of Sports in the United States Zirin sets out to deflate the misconception that sports are "only a game." He chafes at those who dismiss them as entertainment or cordon them off from weightier subject matters, arguing instead that sports are a valuable prism through which to examine American history. Like the work that was Zirin’s inspiration—Howard Zinn's ...