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“Fidel Castro could have been Cuba’s Elvis!” (Dan Rather.) “Fidel Castro is one hell of a guy! “You people would like him!” (Ted Turner to a capacity crowd at Harvard Law School during a speech in 1997.) “Fidel Castro is old-fashioned, courtly—even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!” (Andrea Mitchell.) “Castro has brought very high literacy and great health-care to his country. His personal magnetism is powerful, his presence is commanding.” (Barbara Walters.) “Viva Fidel! Viva Che!” (Jesse Jackson while arm in arm with Fidel Castro himself in 1984.) "Fidel Castro is very shy and sensitive, I frankly like him and...

Suit may revise chapter on tech history: Origins of MS-DOS Software's creator disputes book's description of it being a 'rip-off' A decades-old quarrel over a defining event in computer history -- the creation of the program that propelled Microsoft to dominance -- has suddenly become a legal dispute that could lead to a public trial. Tim Paterson, the programmer widely credited for the software that became Microsoft's landmark operating system, MS-DOS, filed a defamation suit this week against prominent historian and author Harold Evans and the publishers of his book, "They Made America," released last year. At issue is...

Americans have had no lack of dramatic news this year. The Boston Red Sox finally broke the 86-year-old "curse of the Babe" and won a World Series.... But events that don't make headline news often are more important than those that do. That quiet backdrop is explored by Sir Harold Evans, a British journalist, in "They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine -- Two Centuries of Innovation," (Little Brown & Co.) In an interview in the winter issue of "Invention & Technology" magazine, he is quoted as saying that America became economically strong through the "adaptive...

'When ya gettin' rid of him?' Tony Blair has become an embarrassment to Labour's natural allies across the Atlantic - the Democrats Mark Seddon Friday August 20, 2004 The Guardian Out on the stump in Brooklyn with Democrat Congressional hopeful Frank Barbero came a chance to talk to the footsoldiers in an election that all agree is the most important in decades. America is polarised between red and blue - or, as some Democrats whisper, between progressive America and a revived Confederacy. With George, the Vietnam vet turned transit worker, and Jeff Gold, the eternally optimistic full-time organiser, we leafleted...

Is there an original way to comment on the badness of Tina Brown's new column in the Washington Post "Style" section? Brown's widely ridiculed Oct. 23 debut detailed the latest trial faced by "members of the Manhattan buzzocracy," of which Brown and her husband, Harold Evans, are queen and knave. Until this year, Hollywood studios distributed home-video versions of Oscar-contending films to the folks who vote for the Oscars, but evidence that pirates were copying and selling them prompted MPAA President Jack Valenti to ban the practice this go-round. So, as Brown details in her column, publicity agents are begging...