The Sean Bell case in New York has thrown a big spotlight on American big-city police and policing. An unarmed man on the morning of his wedding day — no crime, no offense –cut down in a hail of 50 police bullets, and last week all officers cleared in the case.
Peter Moskos is watching closely. [...]

The Australian Rupert Murdoch, global press baron, plays hardball and big money with the news media on several continents. These days, he’s up to his elbows in American media.
If you read The Wall Street Journal, which he now owns, you’ve seen the changes. Whether you watch or avoid Fox News, you know its impact. And [...]

The story of American music is, in many ways, the story of discovery and rediscovery of blues and gospel and country rolling into rock and pop and Aaron Copeland.
But one American musical tradition is so old and so other-worldly that it’s hardly ever touched the modern mainstream. It’s called Sacred Harp — and the harp [...]

“He does not speak for me,” says Barack Obama, of his former Chicago pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But Jeremiah Wright keeps speaking anyway.
After weeks of lying low, in the past week Rev. Wright has been all over: with Bill Moyers Friday night, preaching in Dallas and speaking before the NAACP on Sunday, taking questions at [...]

Former U.S. Secretary of State — and Treasury, and Labor — George Shultz has been mixing it up with the great powers of Washington and the world since the Eisenhower administration.
As Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state he became a hero to conservatives and more for his role in ending the Cold War. Now, at 87, [...]

We’ve heard it again and again, but seldom laid out with the clarity Steven Greenhouse brings. The American worker is getting crunched. Corporate profits are up. Productivity is up. CEO pay is way up. But the American worker is getting squeezed.
Greenhouse is labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times. He’s brought home the [...]

It’s a question many of us probably ask ourselves, or the ones we love: How would we prefer to die? In our sleep, perhaps, on our 100th birthday? Not young, anyway. Not in pain.
But then the broader question, in a country that tries to defy mortality, may be: what is a “good” or “timely” death?
Journalist [...]

A week of soaring prices and a huge primary win. Hillary Clinton hung in, and the campaign moved on to Indiana and North Carolina. General Petraeus got the nod to ship out to a higher post.
The U.S. made striking claims about Syrian-North Korean nuclear ties. President Bush set the table for more Mid-East peace talks.
Rupert [...]

Here’s a conundrum for you: a smaller portion of American households include married couples than ever before — a minority now, says the Census Bureau, just 47 percent. But among Americans who are married, the spouse is being leaned on now — more than ever before — to be everything: lover, confidant, life partner, best [...]

With fuel costs skyrocketing, and just in time for summer, the airline industry is again facing monumental losses. Just this week United, JetBlue and AirTran announced sharp losses, and Delta reported a first quarter loss of $6 billion.
The airlines are cutting everything they can: employees, flights, fleets, and frills. If you’re a traveler, prepare to [...]

For a long time, American well-being has been measured by GDP. By personal income. By cold, hard numbers. Not anymore.
Now, a field of economic study — the measurement of happiness — is coming of age. It’s providing new insights into who we are, and the roots of what really makes us happy. Money, politics, family, [...]

It ain’t over — again. Hillary Clinton pulls out a win in Pennsylvania and sends Barack Obama and superdelegates a double-digit message: Don’t count me out.
And so, the battle for the Democratic nomination goes on, and on, and on, and on. In two weeks, primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.
On paper, the math and money [...]

William Damon is one of the world’s leading scholars on adolescence and human development. And when he looks around the world, he sees a growing problem.
It’s not just that young adults don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. It’s not simply that they won’t leave home. No, it’s that and more: [...]

Warming in last decades has pushed spring forward — cherry blossom and lilac festivals across the country now celebrated days earlier than ever before. It also means birds are laying eggs earlier than before, or — sometimes — not at all.
It’s this kind of subtle mistiming that could spell disaster for our environment, jeopardizing the [...]

Perfumes are more than a scent. They are a state of mind — at least that what all the ads tell us.
A little dab here and you’re picnicking in fields of wild flowers, or experiencing the blush of first love. A spritz there and you’re rolling in satin sheets, and feeling oh so Hollywood. Dab [...]

Tomorrow, Pennsylvanians go to the polls. For weeks Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been courting the Keystone state nonstop. The candidates have bowled, and traded bitter barbs on everything from patriotism, Iraq, small town America, and each other’s character.
We are all about Pennsylvania today, too — bringing Pennsylvanians to the microphone to tell us [...]

Once upon a time, just a few decades ago, the United States saw Communist China as a revolutionary threat, but a revolution with barefoot soldiers.
Then came China’s opening, and the U.S. saw a billion Chinese customers. It turns out, Americans were the big customers. Now China is getting rich, and, some say, leading a revolution [...]

Go to On Point in Shanghai: China’s Week in the News
Every week we hit the news on Friday. This week we do it from China. Things look different when you’re sitting in Shanghai. The pope’s visit to America? Invisible. The Dalai Lama in the U.S.? Big. CNN’s Jack Cafferty and his offhand taunt toward China? [...]

People’s Square, in the middle of Shanghai, is not like Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Shanghai’s square is huge — but green. It feels in April a bit like Central Park.
A few months ago something extraordinary—for China—happened here. Thousands of people marched into People’s Square to protest the extension of a high-speed Maglev train line through [...]

The terrible story behind the story of China’s economic boom is the astounding environmental devastation that has come with it. China’s air, China’s rivers, even China’s seas, are deadly and dying. Half a billion Chinese do not have access to safe drinking water.
Problem is, the boom and the environmental crisis are two sides of the [...]