France enters another week of strikes in public transportation, while the government hopes its latest offer will end the commuters’ misery. It is not only commuters who have been suffering long-delays or forced detours in rail and subway service. The…
Although many tennis players achieved substantial wealth in 2019, it is unlikely Margaret Court will get big bucks for endorsing Nike apparel. She likely will not even be asked to endorse it. The Australian tennis legend will be honored next…
As elections go, the one in Algeria on Thursday was a — what’s the term? — humdinger. Five candidates, electorate of over 20 millions, estimated valid ballots, 301. But you know what I mean. “Hinky Dink” Kenna, who used to…
If, as is likely, you got your French history info from Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, you know the legendary French Resistance (small bands of patriots that suddenly included 40 million Frenchmen on June 8, 1944) began in Africa as well as…
Consider the clarinet. What an oddball musical instrument! It is not the mighty piano, whose range is from the most sublime romanticism — “Für Elise” — to the most shrewd and brilliant jazz riff, as in Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo…
Say what you want about nation-building; its results pale next to the can-do of American fighting men. In a lightning raid preceded by aerial bombardments themselves preceded by months of intelligence gathering and surveillance, American soldiers located a leading Arab…
As reports come in on the Turkish attack on Kurdish positions in northern Syria, the armchair debate in Washington — mind, not the country, be grateful for that — proceeds apace: our war or not our war? Or even if…
A solution to the deplorable situation in Washington may be found by recourse to a misunderstood national treasure: democracy. It is by now obvious even to tennis writers that something is rotten in our nation’s capital. Headlines evoke a “constitutional…
Politically speaking, President Donald Trump may be right about a troop withdrawal from Syria. After years of failure in the Middle East, he wants to cut our losses, and many of his voters would tend to agree that keeping even…