Just before Christmas in 1997, as a tumultuous stock-market crisis ravaged emerging markets in every corner of the globe, readers of the Wall Street Journal were treated to some good news:

The Russian Foreign Minister says it's an American plot to keep Russia weak. The head of the KGB-successor agency offers that same conviction in a formal briefing to President Boris Yeltsin.

Indonesia's scorched-earth compliance with international pressure on East Timor has left Dili, the capital, in ruins, displaced some 100,000 people to refugee camps under the control of the bruta

Finally, the rampant corruption at the core of Russia's post-Communist transformation is front-page news.

After the war life will begin to stir once again, but we won't be here, we will have vanished just as the Aztecs have vanished.

While the Indonesian military's thugs continue their rampage in East Timor, most foreign reporters have fled the country.

With Dili burning and anti-independence militias carrying on a murderous terror campaign beneath the noses of Indonesian soldiers and police, the United Nations prepared to evacuate its East Tim

The new US envoy to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, has personal experience of how frustrating it can be to negotiate, even when speaking in the name of that mega-cliché, "the world

Israeli schoolchildren returned to their desks this year to find a new history curriculum.

In assuming his position at the United Nations, ambassador Richard Holbrooke brings his personal access to power, a sharp intelligence and a capacity, unusual in government, to translate ideas in