Happily, some seasonal giving can be accomplished without ever visiting a store or a Web site. As we have written before, Christmas isn't Christmas - for that matter, Hanukkah isn't Hanukkah - until certain holiday wishes are bestowed on certain deserving Pasco folks. Naughty or nice, it's all the same. This Space now presents its more-or-less annual holiday gift list. ...more

December 30, 2009

Yuletide's final, frantic retailing push is upon us, bearing down like a freight train. Got your shopping finished? Astonishing. Still have items on your list? Join the vast and cranky crowd. ...more

December 20, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dusting off Depression-era emergency powers, the Federal Reserve is extending its reach over the economy as never before, pushing the limits of its authority, if not exceeding them. ...more

October 7, 2008

The Federal Reserve announced today a radical plan to buy massive amounts of short-term debt in a dramatic effort to break through a credit clog that is imperiling the economy. ...more

October 7, 2008

The Bush administration, moving to prevent an economic cataclysm, urged Congress on Friday to grant it far-reaching emergency powers to buy hundreds of billions of dollars of distressed mortgages despite many unknowns about how the plan would work. ...more

September 20, 2008

A suicide attacker detonated a powerful bomb inside a crowded mosque in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing 50 people and wounding 100 as they celebrated one of Islam's major holidays with the country's former interior minister, state-run media reported. ...more

December 22, 2007

Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif will make another attempt to return from exile, his party said Thursday, setting up a new confrontation with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf before Pakistan's critical parliamentary elections. ...more

November 23, 2007

Washington's No. 2 diplomat delivered a blunt message to Pakistan's military ruler, telling him that emergency rule must be lifted and his opponents freed ahead of elections. ...more

November 18, 2007

Though under house arrest and surrounded by soldiers, Pakistan's deposed chief justice managed to get his hands on a mobile phone. ...more

November 7, 2007

For more than five months, the United States has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that would manage to somehow keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power without making a mockery of President Bush's promotion of democracy in the Muslim world. ...more

November 4, 2007