5 July 2010 TORONTO – Broken store windows have been repaired, burned out cars and debris removed. Security barriers that turned much of downtown Toronto into a fortress are gone, and so has a small army of police and security agents. The hooligans have decamped. To everyone’s relief, the G8/G20 […]

28 June 2010 YALTA – As Russian imperial residences go, Livadia is a rather small palace, even modest. Czar Nicholas II had this pretty palace of white limestone built as a family vacation residence in the sunny Crimea. Livadia overlooks one of the Crimea’s amazingly lush sub-tropical forests and the […]

21 June 2010 SEVASTOPOL, UKRAINE –Glory, tragedy, disaster. An army of ghosts haunt this great naval base that commands the Crimea and surrounding Black Sea. It is the site of two of history’s greatest sieges. This majestic city still has much of the strategic importance it did over a century […]