At sea lake in Western Victoria, Bob McClelland is harvesting wheat — and grateful to be doing it. Thanks to a little rain and a pipeline from the Murray River, McClelland's farm is surviving the six-year drought that's parched much of southeast Australia. He isn't sure if it's just one of the region's periodic dry spells or if, as some scientists say, it's been worsened by global warming. But "I'm a bit of a believer in climate change," he says. ...

I belong to a generation of Europeans for whom the United States embodies democracy, progress and liberty. I went there as a student after the war. I have never forgotten the warmth and friendship that the American people showed me. In a word, I belong to that vanishing species: the Americanophile. That is why I am writing this article. I don't believe that Americans fully understand how their use of the death penalty has profoundly degraded the country's image in the ...

Having tucked into his first bottle of vodka earlier than usual, Anatoly Zhbanov goes on an afternoon stroll to buy another one along the dirt road through Lopotova, a dying village on Russia's western edge, in the region of Pskov. It is mid-April, and clumps of snow are still melting at the roadside where Zhbanov, a local artist, stops to peer inside a lopsided cabin, the home of a local bootlegger. In the window stands a plastic ...

Li Li has lost exact count of how many men she has bedded, but she knows the number is far above 100. "I don't keep statistics," says the former journalist, 27. But she isn't averse to kissing and telling. For the past couple of years, Li has kept a blog--written under the pen name Muzi Mei--that has chronicled everything from her penchant for orgies and Internet dating to her skepticism toward marriage when it means staying faithful to one man. ...

For a businessman in Trenton who wants to call the Western Electric Co. in Manhattan—but doesn't know the number—it is about as easy as falling off a logarithm: first he dials 2125551212 , then 2125712345 for Western Electric. If he is lucky he won't have to give an extension number for the man he wants to talk to; if he is luckier, he can still remember why he was calling in the first place.This numerologicl nightmare is only a foretaste ...

Misratah has become the Libyan war's most infamous quagmire, despite its size and location. The rebel-held port city with a population of just half a million on the country's western Mediterranean coast is completely isolated from the swaths of rebel-held territory in the east. As such, both sides recognize it as a symbol of the rebellion's claims to represent all Libyans, not only those who live in the east. And the fact that the city not only ...

The war in Libya is not going well. Muammar Gaddafi shows no sign of giving up power. His forces' siege of the rebel-held city of Misratah has killed upwards of 1,000 people, including two Western journalists. One month in, NATO's air campaign is plagued by halfhearted commitment and intracoalition blame-passing. The rebels on whose behalf the U.S. and its allies intervened have failed to advance much beyond their strongholds in eastern Libya. Only a few inveterate optimists ...

The farmers of western Niger normally spend the first few months of every year filling their mud-brick storage bins with grain. But last November's harvest was a bad one, and many of the bins this year are only half-filled or empty. "It's not normal," says Amadou Salou, a farmer in the town of Male Haoussa, a few hours' drive north of the capital, Niamey. Sheltering under a tree from the scorching mid-day sun with other village elders, Salou sets out ...

Are western policies failing Burma? And is our veneration of Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi partly to blame? These questions struck me at an exhibition in Bangkok by the Toronto-based photographer Anne Bayin. Amnesty International Canada called the show "a striking illustration of [Suu Kyi's] plight." But it gave me the creeps. For some photos, Bayin asked famous people such as Desmond Tutu and Vaclav Havel to express solidarity by holding a half-mask of Suu Kyi over their faces. ...

In another part of the world, it would have been a straightforward public-works project. A highway was too narrow to handle the increasing flow of traffic, so the authorities brought in heavy equipment to widen it. Partway through the job, however, a road-leveling tractor uncovered the opening to a cave no one knew was there. Work came to an immediate halt, and within hours a scientific swat team descended on the site to study it. That's the law in Israel, ...