Author Image: Christine Spolar

Christine Spolar

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U.S. tourists sneeze, Europe catches cold

Americans have gone missing. American Express has shuttered two decades-old offices in major tourist cities. Taxi drivers are wailing that Americans and their big tips are nowhere to be seen....
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Forget it, Giacomo: It’s Chinatown

In the heart of "Made in Italy" fashion country, China has carved out a home. Signs in Chinese script hang from wrought-iron balconies in this Tuscan city. Hot dumplings and...
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Youths rage against everything

They gripped rocks and chunks of concrete, looking ready for a fight. But the five young men -- well-spoken sons of a dentist, merchants, even a state tax collector --...
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Nuclear ambitions pose predicament

Despite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's congratulations to Obama last week—the first such gesture from an Iranian leader since the 1979 Islamic Revolution—Iran's nuclear ambitions promise to be as big a predicament...
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A return to days of anxiety

The people from the plains of Andalusia almost forgot how to worry. The country's economic boom transformed Jodar, population 12,600, less than a decade ago. Men suddenly could find good-paying...