London Fashion: Rethinking Luxury

It’s good to see Tom Ford nail down a hot look again. Two years ago he staged a private little show in his New York store, asking friends like Julianne Moore, Rachel Feinstein and Rita Wilson to model his first women’s line since leaving Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. It was a memorable night.

The iPhone 5 Scores Well, With a Quibble

If you were taking a college course called iPhone 101, your professor might identify three factors that have made Apple’s smartphone a mega-success.

First, design. A single company, known for its obsession over details, produces both the hardware and the software. The result is a single, coherently designed whole.

Strike May Be Over, but Teachers’ Pension Is Still a Big Issue for Chicago

One of the most vexing problems for Chicago and its teachers went virtually unmentioned during the strike: The pension fund is about to hit a wall.

A comedown for America's defense lobby

Reuters  To grasp how much the budget wars have altered the natural order of things in Washington, consider this: One of the most powerful lobbies in town, the defense industry, is feeling a bit powerless.

It is trying to head off automatic across-the-board cuts in the Pentagon budget of $54 billion next year alone, produced by a 2011 bipartisan budget deal. But it has made little apparent progress in blocking or tempering the so-called "sequestration" of funds set for January.

Cartoons in French weekly fuel Mohammad furor

 A French satirical magazine on Wednesday published a series of cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad, setting off a new wave of outrage among Muslims and condemnation from French leaders amid widening unrest over an amateur video that has provoked violence throughout the Islamic world.