Word: agente
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Flying out of Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport recently, after covering the outbreak of violence between Israel and Hizballah, I got the usual treatment for a gentile foreigner: half an hour of questioning by a young security agent before I even got to the counter. He started with "when were you born?" and ended with "how did you get to the airport?" and covered a lot of ground in between. I was accustomed to the drill, having lived in Israel throughout the 1990s as TIME's Jerusalem bureau chief. This, chiefly, is how the Israelis keep aviation safe...
...paid for your ticket, why are you traveling, why did you buy the ticket so late (or so early), where did you travel in Israel, whom did you meet here. Answers like "the Prime Minister" never seemed to get me anywhere. Almost always, I'd be questioned by one agent, who would then leave to consult with a second agent, who would appear and ask many of the same questions. Then the two would compare notes, often with a supervisor, before the first agent would return with more questions. Women traveling alone are said to get special attention because...
...Thanks to technology, every literary agent can tell every author, "Your book's great." We let Amazon's rating system deliver the truth. Every politician can surround himself with yes men. Only the polls have the courage to say no. We're so accustomed to the watered-down, milquetoast version of news that when someone tells the truth, we're shocked and appalled...
...watching oneself is, as Jackson claims, all actors' secret pleasure, Jackson distinguishes himself from his peers in two ways: he cops to vanity, and his vanity has a track record for dovetailing with popular taste. "My agent is always looking for movies to get me the Academy Award, but I don't think like that," says Jackson, whose films have taken in more money at the box office than those of any other actor in history. "I want the movies I'm in to remind me of things I spent Saturday afternoons watching as a kid and then went home...
...estate madness. In Glen Ellyn, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, Deb and John Tritt have tried to unload their house for seven months. They've spruced up the place, knocked $58,000 off the price, to $739,000, and offered a week at their Hawaii time-share to an agent who delivers an offer. None of it has paid off, and two more houses in the neighborhood are for sale. "We're moving to a town home," says Deb, "and the only saving grace is that it's not finished...