World

London. -- Who are the British? What do they want? Are they Europeans committed to a destiny shared with the other states on the ancient continent? Or are they something else -- Atlanticists, a people with one hand extended across the English Channel, the other groping westward across the ocean in solidarity with the English-speaking democracies?Or are they, as their greatest poet described them, a special breed apart, a people living in "This little world," content with their separateness?

Televisions, computers, e-mail, cell phones. As technology has wormed its way into our everyday lives over the past 75 years or so, Hollywood has served as both harbinger and trendsetter. Just as imaginative screenwriters have always delighted in showing where technology might take us, trendy screenwriters have never hesitated to embrace the newest technologies as essential parts of everyday life. And nothing can popularize a new gadget like having it show up in the movies. As much confidence as Steve Jobs may have had in the personal computer he helped to invent, here's betting he really knew the PC had arrived when it started showing up in movies like 1983's WarGames.

After Rick Calvert started a political blog two years ago, he was startled when other Web logs, including some well-known ones, began linking to his within just a few weeks. He was even more stunned when he called to interview the journalist Fred Barnes about his biography of President Bush and Barnes was available, eager to chat. Then other publishers began sending Calvert their books for him to review. Calvert marveled at the ease of blogging and the authority it bestowed. To think he got into to it mostly to do something smarter with his spare time than play video games.

Contemporary political discourse is strikingly polarized: good nations vs. evil nations, welfare state vs. watchman state, free markets vs. bureaucrats, Republicans vs. Democrats. While everyone is busy trying to prove he or she is right, problems fester: geopolitical instability, increasing income disparity and impending environmental disaster, to name a few. I have wondered for a long time whether these two phenomena are interrelated - whether the inability to look beyond simple dichotomies has gotten us into the mess we're in. Re-reading some texts of postmodern philosophy has helped me see the connection.

Teams from Tampa, Fla., and Mexico advanced yesterday to the Cal Ripken 12-and-under World Series championship game, which will be held today at 5 p.m. at Cal Sr.'s Yard in Aberdeen. This is the fifth consecutive series final for Mexico, which won the title in 2003 and 2004. Christian Arroyo, Tampa's outstanding shortstop, is aware of Mexico's toughness and tradition, but he said, "Bring 'em on. We can take them." Today's title game will be televised on Versus, with Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. and his brother, former Oriole Bill Ripken, as analysts.

IT TOOK thousands of years, from the dawn of civilization until the 19th century, for the world's population to reach 1 billion people.But by this fall, probably sometime around mid-October, planet Earth will be home to 6 billion humans.In the years since John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, the global population has virtually doubled.These population figures aren't any pie-in-the-sky numbers from some alarmist environmental group. The statistics come from the U.S. Census Bureau, based on a variety of expert sources on world population.

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This is an excerpt of a New York Times editorial published Friday.LAST YEAR, when Uganda became the first country to get some relief of its external debt under a new program of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, it used the money it saved largely to eliminate fees charged for primary school. The impact was dramatic.While two years ago 54 percent of Uganda's children attended primary school, this year 90 percent do. In contrast, neighboring Zambia, which spends five times more each year on debt service than on primary education, had to raise school fees.

RECENTLY, on this page, columnist Ronald Brownstein gave his Top 10 list of the most effective American political one-liners of the century, mainly from presidents and politicians. All men.Please allow me to add to the record with my own Top 10 list of great one-liners by women in U.S. history, not just this century.Note that since holding public office is a recent career step for the fairer sex, this list comprises people from various walks of life. Two were wise political helpmates; two were dauntless suffragettes; another was a world-famous anthropologist.

WASHINGTON -- Call this Y6B: the year of 6 billion, a milestone the world's population is expected to reach this weekend.The birth of the planet's 6 billionth inhabitant, projected by the U.S. Census Bureau, will mark another historic first: The world's population has doubled in less than 40 years.Despite a gradual slowing of the overall rate of growth, the world population is increasing by 78 million people a year. That's the equivalent of adding a city nearly the size of San Francisco every three days, or the combined populations of France, Greece and Sweden every year, according to a coalition of environmental and population groups.

MEXICO CITY - - The dream lasted all of 10 minutes plus a few seconds. It began with Charlie Davies' goal for the United States 8:44 into its World Cup qualifying match against Mexico at Azteca Stadium on Wednesday afternoon. It ended with Israel Castro's goal for Mexico 18:57 into the game that tied the score at 1-1. In between those goals, the American players and coaches - if they had had time to catch their breath - might have contemplated the first U.S. victory in history over Mexico in Mexico.

This world belongs to the young and the daring, the avid, the adventurous, and that's why one follows the saga of corporate bailouts with a certain trepidation. We're mortgaging the future and we are rescuing the stubborn and stupid. The cost of a good college education for the young and daring is stupefying; meanwhile the federal deficit yawns, tax increases lie ahead, job losses per month are like a major city getting wiped out, and India and China are doing what we used to do better.

International commerce and openness are in the British bloodstream. They have been the foundation of our economy since the Industrial Revolution. Today trade remains the cornerstone of the U.K. economy and a crucial factor in America's success too. Yet in the current economic turmoil, it can be hard for governments to keep their eyes on the prize of economic recovery as our traditional industries suffer, jobs are lost and each country struggles to...

Televisions, computers, e-mail, cell phones. As technology has wormed its way into our everyday lives over the past 75 years or so, Hollywood has served as both harbinger and trendsetter. Just as imaginative screenwriters have always delighted in showing where technology might take us, trendy screenwriters have never hesitated to embrace the newest technologies as essential parts of everyday life. And nothing can popularize a new gadget like having it show up in the movies. As much confidence as Steve Jobs may have had in the personal computer he helped to invent, here's betting he really knew the PC had arrived when it started showing up in movies like 1983's WarGames.

C oraline uses 3-D as a vehicle of artistic delight. The writer-director, Henry Selick, hewing closely to Neil Gaiman's novel, employs it not for cheap thrills but for wonder. The combination of 3-D photography and puppet-animation - centered on actual figures designed by hand and manipulated frame by frame - creates a world that's dense, active and fluid: a sensory Jacuzzi. When Selick's independent-minded heroine, 11-year-old Coraline, follows a path through a tiny, square door into a house that looks mysteriously like her own, the tunnel she crawls through functions like Alice's rabbit hole or Dorothy Gale's cyclone.

"... The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." - Franklin Delano Roosevelt Americans were scared, but they got it. In the midst of the Great Depression, struggling to feed their families, they kept hope alive with the help of FDR. Words well-delivered can be a tonic for despairing souls, something to remember at Thanksgiving. As we have seen again recently, words can stir us to rise above economic calamity or reinvigorate our democracy. And it's not simply about winning elections.

I am trying to book a trip online for South America; a pretty good package was arranged for me by an online company. How can I check if it is reputable? You can't know just by looking at a site whether it's OK, even if it has seals and endorsements from God himself. That's not to say that all online agencies are bogus - far from it - but when consumers moved from bricks to clicks, they lost that human connection. You can look a travel agent in the eye, but a cursor is impenetrable. If you're not going the travel agent route, put on your world's greatest skeptic suit and prepare to spend a lot of time pounding the keyboard.

World leaders gathered in Hokkaido, Japan, on Monday prompted raised eyebrows by indulging in a lavish eight-course, 18-dish meal at a Group of Eight summit where one of the main issues was expected to be hunger and the global food crisis. (African leaders who had taken part in talks during the day were not invited to the function.) Hours earlier, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had urged the world to reduce the "unnecessary demand" for food and called on British families to cut back on their wasteful use of food.

Just a few months have made a world of difference. Until recently, investors could leave worries about the U.S. economy behind, plop money into an international fund, China fund or emerging-market fund and make money with little effort or any attention to world news. Chinese, Indian and Latin American funds soared. European funds were good to investors. Going outside the United States paid off nicely. But that has not been the case this year. As it turns out, the world is not immune to what ails the United States.

WASHINGTON - What kind of relationship do Americans want to build with the world's 6 billion other people in the years ahead? This question is urgent, because the past seven years have seen an unprecedented drop in our country's global favorability rating. In today's hyper-connected world, that has huge consequences for Washington's ability to protect American interests. To fix this problem, many experts - and even the presidential candidates - are promoting agendas to rebuild America's position of world leadership.