Forgiveness

The Novice A Story of True Love Thich Nhat Hanh HarperOne: 147 pp., $23.99 The novel, as a storytelling device, begins with that white parchment of possibility, turns many tricks, reveals many truths and, in the best of hands, can exploit the very worst in humankind. Novels are fairly seditious undertakings. And that's why the very idea of a Zen novel sounds like either a comedy sketch or simply an improbable stretch. And yet that's what Vietnamese Buddhist Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh has done with his first novel, "The Novice: A Story of True Love.

When U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner tearfully confessed Monday to sending lewd photos via Twitter to random women, wife Huma Abedin -- Hillary Rodham Clinton's right-hand woman during the 2000 presidential campaign, married to Weiner just under a year ago -- was noticeably absent. In stories of sexual indiscretion by male public figures, their wives are often caught in difficult positions. Some, like Hillary Clinton, stand by their high-profile husbands, while others, like Tiger Woods' ex-wife Elin Nordegren, cut the cord.

Newt Gingrich says he doesn’t expect to be vice president, and, he says, he's made personal mistakes. The Republican presidential hopeful, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, threw back to moderator David Gregory a question about the No. 2 spot. “Can you imagine any presidential nominee who would pick me to be the vice presidential candidate?” Gingrich, the former House speaker, asked. “As Reagan said in ’76 when he was hoping Ford would not ask him, nobody could automatically say no to the president of the United States," he said.

As the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the 14th Dalai Lama says he practices compassion to such an extent that he tries to avoid swatting mosquitoes "when my mood is good and there is no danger of malaria," sometimes watching with interest as they swell with his blood. Yet, in an appearance Tuesday at USC, he appeared to suggest that the United States was justified in killing Osama bin Laden. As a human being, Bin Laden may have deserved compassion and even forgiveness, the Dalai Lama said in answer to a question about the assassination of the Al Qaeda leader.

Rebel leaders in Libya said Friday that they must accept accidental deaths caused by NATO airstrikes as a consequence of international efforts to protect civilians. "You have to look at the big pictures. The benefits outweigh the damage," rebel spokesman Mustafa Gheriani said. "We have to accept these kinds of mistakes and hope not too many take place. NATO is important for us and has saved a lot of lives. " A NATO-led alliance is leading a battle to prevent Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi's forces from harming civilians in several parts of the country, especially the rebel-controlled east, where pro-Kadafi forces and those opposed to the longtime ruler have been locked in a battlefield stalemate.

Every morning, Kevin O'Neill, a devout Catholic, attends Mass and asks for forgiveness. He went Sunday knowing USC officials had essentially granted as much, reinstating him as USC's basketball coach after an altercation had put his job at risk. And that afternoon, he stood at the back of the team's locker room, smiling, watching his players celebrate wildly when they learned they'd advanced to the NCAA tournament. It was a win-win day for USC, and especially for O'Neill.

Conventional wisdom holds that in a time of budget rollbacks and a glut of media, Hollywood's A-list talent pool is operating with diminished clout. But the strange case of Charlie Sheen shows how the travails of a big star can still shake entertainment conglomerates. Sheen, the long-troubled star of "Two and a Half Men," checked himself into rehab again Friday, freezing production on TV's most-watched sitcom for the second year in a row. That's left CBS and Warner Bros., the studio that makes the show, scrambling to rejigger schedules and shield an asset whose ultimate value will ultimately top $1 billion.

Reporting from Park City, Utah ? If character truly is destiny, what does that say about the mind-warping trajectory of the charismatic evangelical Christian preacher Joshua Milton Blahyi, once known as General Butt Naked? That name may sound silly, but it's not a joke to those who survived Liberia's 14-year civil war ? or the tens of thousands who didn't. A stark naked warlord in that struggle, a man who has admitted to killing thousands of people and doing unspeakable things during the 1989-2003 conflict, Blahyi is still so well-known in the country that, says filmmaker Daniele Anastasion, "when he walks through the airport in Monrovia you can hear it around you, 'that's Butt Naked.

The mourners were outnumbered by news crews and clerics at this week's burial service at the Los Angeles County Crematory. I'm not sure what group to count myself in. I took notes, and I prayed. And I mourned for those who had died alone, as I contemplated the freshly dug mass grave that had become their final home. It held the remains of 1,689 people who died in Los Angeles County three years ago and were cremated by the county after no one showed up to claim their bodies. Three years later, their ashes were still unclaimed.

'The World Is Bigger Now: An American Journalist's Release from Captivity in North Korea' by Euna Lee with Lisa Dickey (Broadway Books: 305 pp., $25.) . On March 17, 2009, Euna Lee, a journalist working in China on a documentary about North Korean defectors and her colleague, Laura Ling, were chased by soldiers and, according to Lee, dragged across the border into North Korea. They were arrested for "committing hostilities against the Korean nation," and imprisoned for 140 days.