Asher Price

OXFORD, ENGLAND — This past week marked the premiere of the second season of FOX’s hit reality show American Idol. One of the program’s central innovations is that it allows the at-home audience to participate — by phone — in determining the show’s outcome. American Idol is a British import, which is not surprising when […]

SEVILLE, SPAIN — Spanish soldiers stationed in the Gulf may make up only a negligible percentage of allied forces in the region — but their presence is anything but token as far as Spanish voters are concerned. That’s because among the “Coalition of the Willing,” the Spanish are the most unwilling. Even as the war […]

OXFORD, ENGLAND — Last Sunday, British cabinet member Clare Short called Prime Minister Tony Blair’s hawkish stance on Iraq “extraordinarily reckless” and said she would resign in protest if Britain went to war without United Nations approval. Blair was reportedly furious with the remarks, and speculation immediately surfaced that he planned to sack Short. But […]

LONDON — With a confrontation between the United States and the United Nations imminent, British Prime Minister Tony Blair suddenly finds himself playing the pivotal role in forming a coalition against Iraq. Between talking tough at a Camp David summit with U.S. President Bush earlier this month and talking coaxingly with French President Jacques Chirac […]

OXFORD, ENGLAND — It’s 4.30 p.m. and already it looks like a foggy night inOxford. Outside the firehouse off Holybush Row, eight firefighters sit likehomeless people around a metal drum raging with flames. They wear their beat-up,grayish fire jackets along with blue jeans and sneakers. With a fire ax onechops wooden pallets and feeds splinters […]