The thawed relationship between Jesuit order Society of Jesus and John Paul is a major accomplishment of Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, a low-key and unflappable native of the Netherlands.

For centuries, the Society of Jesus has been considered both a blessing and a bane to the Roman Catholic Church. The order has been expelled at various times by the rulers of France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Russia, Japan; the Papacy itself once suppressed the organization for 41 years. In modern…

In industrial nations the revitalized environmental movement has spawned a fresh offensive against pollution. Detectives are hired to track down those who contaminate waterways.

Swaminathan Asokan dreams of water. It gushes out of a giant tap and fills bucket after bucket. But then he wakes up — to a nightmare. For at Asokan’s house in Madras, India’s fourth largest city, there is no water. The tap has long been dry. So he must get…

The biggest marriage on the Continent took place in April with the joining of two longtime Dutch rivals, Algemene Bank Nederland (ABN) and Amsterdam-Rotterdam Bank (Amro).

The 1980s were a time of feast and fear for the world’s international banking system: an era of globalization and vigorous overseas expansion but also of sharp competitive thrust. Asian banks and increasing numbers of European ones hung OPEN FOR BUSINESS signs abroad, joining the U.S. multinationals that had…

The history of faking is nearly as old as the history of art. Dutchman Van Meegeren (1889-1947) produced a stream of “Vermeers” and was sentenced to a year in prison for fraud.

The history of faking is nearly as old as the history of art, and for as long as there have been documents, there have been forgeries. “This is not a lie, it is indeed the truth,” runs an inscription of the earliest forgery we know, a Babylonian cuneiform inscription from…