Volgograd Russia

In the city of Volgograd, southern Russia, hope is the color of white-hot boiling steel pouring once again from a furnace in the broken-down ruin of the Red October steelworks. Hope has the weight of a pay packet in the pocket. It smells like the fumes from the smokestacks of industrial dinosaurs that are getting up from their knees and lumbering back from the dead. And it walks like Vladimir V. Putin, Russia's acting president.

In the city of Volgograd, southern Russia, hope is the color of white-hot boiling steel pouring once again from a furnace in the broken-down ruin of the Red October steelworks. Hope has the weight of a pay packet in the pocket. It smells like the fumes from the smokestacks of industrial dinosaurs that are getting up from their knees and lumbering back from the dead. And it walks like Vladimir V. Putin, Russia's acting president.

In this city once called Stalingrad, where colossal feats of architecture celebrate Russia's triumph in World War II, monuments more befitting the vanquished now dominate the landscape. They are the slipshod, five-story apartment houses dubbed "Khrushchoby"--Nikita Khrushchev's slums--flat-roofed cubes of crooked bricks and crumbling mortar thrown up artlessly in pursuit of Communist notions of progress in the postwar era.

In this city once called Stalingrad, where colossal feats of architecture celebrate Russia's triumph in World War II, monuments more befitting the vanquished now dominate the landscape. They are the slipshod, five-story apartment houses dubbed "Khrushchoby"--Nikita Khrushchev's slums--flat-roofed cubes of crooked bricks and crumbling mortar thrown up artlessly in pursuit of Communist notions of progress in the postwar era.

What this world needs is a new kind of army - the army of the kind. --Cleveland Amory About 1,100 miles ago we were  on the outskirts of Volgograd, Russia. When we stopped for gas I noticed a shiny object protruding from my back right tire. On closer inspection, I realized a nail had punctured the tire. After consulting with Steve Privolos, my co-driver on the 10,000-mile road trip from Britain to Ulan Bator, Mongolia ,  known as the Mongol Rally , we decided we would keep the nail and keep driving.

Yankee Stadium is going out with an All-Star salute. Commissioner Bud Selig officially announced the ballpark will play host to the 79th major league All-Star game July 15, 2008, the final season before the New York Yankees move into a new stadium across the street. It will be the fourth All-Star game at Yankee Stadium, which opened in 1923. The last All-Star game there was in 1977.

Justin Gatlin's phone rang at 8 a.m. on Friday. At the other end was Allyson Felix, who calls him "my sidekick" and sought his reassurance as she prepared for the 200-meter final at the world championships. "She said, 'I'm nervous,' " Gatlin recalled. "I said, 'What are you nervous about? You beat Veronica Campbell head to head in London a few weeks ago, and you've been out there all season.' "She ran a great race, a very gutsy race." Two years after she graduated from L.A.

"Those are precious." Precious? The objects I'm peering at are charred and pitted chunks of sandstone that look as though they've been retrieved from a fire pit -- because they have. This is the Frauenkirche in Dresden, an elegant historic Protestant cathedral, and the charred stones signify something precious indeed. On Feb. 13, 1945, British and American planes began bombing this city in eastern Germany.

Pierre Garenne, a 33-year-old pastry chef, worries that the generous French welfare system may weigh his country down when it competes in the streamlined European Community after 1992. Yet, Garenne does not want French benefits reduced too much in order to restore a competitive edge. "What frightens me," he said, "is that we might fall into the American system afterward. Of that, I'm afraid."