Goodwill

No A-list Hollywood celebrity has done more to try to soothe the wounds in the Balkans than Angelina Jolie. Through her Jolie-Pitt Foundation, she has donated millions of dollars to groups active in the region, such as Doctors Without Borders and Global Action for Children. And last spring, Jolie and partner Brad Pitt visited Bosnia to assist the nearly 120,000 people who remain displaced, unable to return to their homes. But Jolie finds herself in the difficult position of reopening those wounds with a new movie set against the backdrop of the 1992-1995 conflict.

China moved Tuesday to ease its conflict with Southeast Asian neighbors over its territorial claims, releasing Vietnamese fishermen jailed for working in disputed waters and softening its language at a meeting of defense ministers. The moves suggested that Beijing is rethinking its aggressive assertion of claims to disputed waters and islands, which has heightened tensions with its neighbors. At a meeting in Hanoi with defense ministers of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations, Chinese officials avoided their previous declarations that the South China Sea is a "core interest.

Hungry, sweat-soaked flood survivors stood ankle-deep in mud, beaming at the sight of bags of cooked rice and clothes being doled out by relief workers from a white van that slowly rumbled through their broken neighborhood. The help was coming from Falah-e-Insaniat, a wing of the banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa militant group, but that didn't matter much to the dirt-poor residents of this stretch of half-destroyed brick huts and flooded wheat fields. No government agency or international relief organization had shown up, and that made Falah-e-Insaniat their lifeline.

"Let Me In" began the long, Scandinavian road to fan acceptance Saturday, as Overture Films, director Matt Reeves and the cast went in front of the Comic-Con faithful to plead their case. Director Reeves, evincing the look of a Silicon Valley programmer and the speaking style of a professor, acknowledged right off the bat that he was facing an uphill climb. "A lot of people are worried," he said. "I love that movie. The thing is, that movie will exist.... This is another interpretation that I hope you'll love."

When Los Angeles residents are asked to conserve water, they conserve. Right away. Consumption in June 2009 hit a 32-year low immediately after the City Council limited sprinkler use to Mondays and Thursdays and restructured rates, keeping them low for basic indoor use but raising them precipitously for wasters. If only city leaders could keep up. They were months late on the draw Tuesday when they rewrote the sprinkler ordinance — to allow shorter but more frequent sprinkling — and sent it to the Board of Water and Power Commissioners for approval.

Robert J. Wussler, a CNN co-founder and a longtime CBS executive, has died after a long illness. He was 73. Wussler died June 5 at his home in Westport, Conn., spokesman Arthur Sando said. Robert Joseph Wussler was born Sept. 8, 1936, in Newark, N.J., and graduated in 1957 from Seton Hall University with a bachelor's in communication arts. He started his 21-year career at CBS working in the mailroom and rose to become head of the sports division and then president of the network.

Last year, just before Christmas, the manager of a city ice rink called Doreen Denny on her day off. At age 68, Denny still taught ice skating five days a week. The manager insisted she come in right away. His voice sounded odd. "There's some crazy lady here who says she has something that belongs to you," he said, trying to sound mysterious. "It's something from the '50s." "The '50s?" Denny sputtered in her clipped British accent. "I wasn't even here in the '50s." But she was. Fifty-one years before, as a wispy teenager from Twickenham, England, she and her partner had skated flawlessly for their country at the storied Broadmoor World Arena to capture the 1959 ice dancing world championship.

A year ago this month, President Obama declared to an audience at Cairo University that he had "come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world." In a surprisingly bold speech that quoted the Koran repeatedly and reached out to Arabs and Muslims who had grown increasingly disaffected with American foreign policy, Obama candidly addressed the issues of Iraq, Afghanistan and democracy, and seized the moment by acknowledging both the Palestinian and Israeli historical narratives.

Much nonsense has been written in recent years about the prospects of American decline and the inevitable rise of China. But it was not a declining power that I saw in recent weeks as I jetted from the Middle East to the Far East through two of America's pivotal geographic commands — Central Command and Pacific Command. The very fact that the entire world is divided up into American military commands is significant. There is no French, Indian or Brazilian equivalent — not yet even a Chinese counterpart.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan swept into Greece on Friday with 10 Cabinet ministers and 80 businesspeople in tow, making a dramatic show of goodwill toward a historic rival. Despite strong disagreements that continue to fester over Cyprus and the Aegean Sea, the longtime foes are hoping to hammer out mutual cuts in defense spending. The savings would be particularly prized by Greece, where a severe financial crisis has provoked angry street demonstrations and forced painful cuts to retirement and other social benefits.