Flying Girl

BEIJING (Reuters) - China hopes that a visit by a senior North Korean envoy can ease tension in the region and help spur efforts to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Friday. "We hope that this visit can ameliorate the present tension on the Korean peninsula and give new impetus to pushing for the denuclearization of the peninsula," ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily briefing. ...

We've all known people like Nancy. The title character of Andrew Semans' "Nancy, Please" is a real pill, dark eyes, slumped shoulders, and an eternal pout. There's always drama in Nancy's life, and she's always expressing it physically. She's always impetuous, always difficult, and frequently nasty, as if lashing out not against a single person but the world at large. In spite of it all, her punk sneer and angular sensuality is also sharp like a knife, tight like a fist. And for young potential PhD Paul, she is an out-and-out boogeyman. Working as a graduate student at Yale, Paul has just emerged from the dark tunnel of being Nancy's roommate. We're led to believe they didn't interact much, and when they did, it was slightly more than the standard tension that occurs when two young people with nothing in common share space. The more stringently academic Paul, now headed to the safety of an apartment shared with longtime girlfriend Jen, is counting his blessing he's emerging from...