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Time capsule: Frankie Laine

Frankie Laine had been one of the most successful of the big-voiced balladeers who emerged in North America in the late 1940s and 1950s. But as Arts columnist Brian Brennan reveals in his new time capsule piece, Laine first made his name not as a singer but as a world-record champion of marathon dancing. An excerpt of From Marathon Dancing to Pop Stardom: Frankie Laine: In his heyday, singer Frankie Laine was all over the radio, on records and in jukeboxes, and on the soundtracks of movies and television shows. But when he did an interview with me at age

Global Warming hiatus due – surprise! – to Atlantic Ocean

New research published today in the journal Science suggests, surprisingly, that the answer to the biggest climate change mystery of the past decade or so may be found in the deep Atlantic Ocean, and not as suspected in the Pacific. Noted Science: Why did the rapid global warming that characterized the latter part of the 20th century slow down over the last 15 years or so? Many different theories have been proposed, but a new study suggests that a massive movement of heat from shallow surface waters to deep regions of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans — but not the Pacific Ocean,

Will Islamic State zealots bring U.S. and Iran together?

Relations between Iran and the United States have been ice cold since 1979. The terrorist attack of 9/11 could have been one opportunity for  a thawing, but “among the plethora of murderously stupid things former United States President George W. Bush did was to shut that door by including Iran in his “axis of evil” speech in 2002,” writes International Affairs columnist Jonathan Manthorpe.  But now, the common threat posed by the Islamic State extremists — in the news this week for their grotesque murder of journalist James Foley — may finally open channels of communication. An excerpt of Manthorpe’s new

James Foley, Journalist

James Foley, American teacher-turned-journalist, was abducted in Syria in November, 2012. He reportedly died this week after extremists dressed him up in an orange suit like the ones Americans put on prisoners at Guantánamo, and a man with a British accent cut off his head. His killers videotaped the murder and put it up on YouTube.  The self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which claimed responsibility for Foley’s murder, reportedly threatened to kill another American journalist kidnapped in Syria, Steven Sotloff, unless United States President Barack Obama ends air strikes in Iraq. (Obama responded today with a denunciation of

Western security concerns fund Ebola drugs

The World Health Organization said Tuesday the current outbreak of Ebola, which has to date killed an estimated 1,200 people in West Africa, is confirmed only in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, and “at present, no cases have been confirmed anywhere else in the world.” On August 8, the organization had declared an extremely rare Public Health Emergency of International Concern over the outbreak, and the world’s news media (NY Times; CBC; BBC; Al Jazeera) is carrying stories about it hour by hour. Why is Ebola getting so much attention — and relative funding? For pennies per year per person, say experts, neglected tropical

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