Ruins

The folks responsible for "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" - the "ethnic" romantic comedy that ate the 2002 box office - have made "My Life in Ruins," a second cute, shoddy-looking movie. The Ruins are Greek. The life, once again, is Nia Vardalos's. The problem with the new movie is the same as with the previous one. Vardalos has this idea that she's a marm. And while it's true that she personifies her movies, I don't quite buy her librarian mode. In "My Life in Ruins," the American tour guide she plays, Georgia Yanakopulos, wants to educate the travelers on her tours about Greek history (she's an unemployed professor)

Except for one pitch, Patrick Corbin had a nice night against the Los Angeles Dodgers. But that pitch resulted in a two-run home run for Matt Treanor, and that was enough for Chris Capuano and the Dodgers, who beat Arizona 6-1 on Monday night for their fifth straight victory. "I was trying to get a fastball over," Corbin said. "He put a good swing on it and hit it out. That happens, but I felt like I kind of came back and worked ahead a lot better. I got some bad swings and got some groundballs and kept the team in the game.

BLUFF— Just south of the monumental face of Cedar Mesa, a series of multi-story sandstone statues rises abruptly out of the desert. Locals call these cliffs and monoliths the Valley of the Gods. When my fiance, Andrew, and I drove through at sunset one November evening, the name seemed fitting. The slanted light turned the sandstone buttes into a thousand shifting hues of pink and purple, and the flat valley floor seemed to stretch forever. The road was even more spectacular as we wound up an oxbowed road to the top of the mesa and the sunlight drained from the sky. When we...

When Dan Fitzsimmons looks across the Susquehanna River and sees the flares of Pennsylvania gas wells, he thinks bitterly of the riches beneath his own land locked up by the heated debate that has kept hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, out of New York. "I go over the border and see people planting orchards, buying tractors, putting money back in their land," said Fitzsimmons, a Binghamton landowner who heads the 70,000-member Joint Landowners Coalition of New York. "We'd like to do that too, but instead we struggle to pay the taxes and to hang onto our farms.

SHANNONBRIDGE, Ireland — Not far off the main road between Galway and Dublin is the ancient monastic settlement of Clonmacnoise. First settled by St. Ciaran about 545 AD, the site was destroyed by fire 13 times and was attacked over 40 times by Vikings, Anglo-Normans, and the Irish before being reduced to rubble by the English in the mid-16th century. Three hundred years later, it was designated a national monument. You don’t have to be a fan of history or religion to enjoy this scenic landscape located high above the banks of the River Shannon.

A 17th century-style replica building at Plimoth Plantation was destroyed yesterday by a fire that spread from a fireplace to the roof, according to Ellie Donovan, the organization's executive director. Firefighters quickly put out the blaze at the Cooke House, but the fire "ate up the whole roof by the time we got there," battalion chief Dean DelTorro said. No one was injured. Donovan said the building will be torn down. The tourist site was reopened later in the day.

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Heavy rains caused a hilltop to collapse in a poor neighborhood of the Bolivian capital yesterday, cracking roads, destroying at least 400 homes, and burying people’s belongings under mud and debris. There were no fatalities but significant damage from the landslide in the barrio of Callapa, said Luis Revilla, the mayor of La Paz. Edwin Herrera, a city government spokesman, called the slide the worst that La Paz has seen and said the earth was still moving downhill.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - She is amazing her doctors, the 16-year-old choir girl who came close to dying but wouldn’t in the crumbled concrete graveyard of Port-au-Prince. More than two weeks after the earthquake brought down her school - and a day after she was lifted from the ruins - Darlene Etienne was eating yogurt, talking, and regaining her strength yesterday. “We are very surprised at the fact that she is still alive,’’ said Dr. Evelyne Lambert, who is caring for her on a French hospital ship offshore.

TIKAL NATIONAL PARK, Guatemala - On the road to the Maya ruins we sat in our guide George Hernandez's van, waiting for him to complete the paperwork in the concrete immigration building at the Guatemalan border. As he jumped in and shifted gears, he warned us it would be a long, bumpy ride with no facilities en route, suggesting we stop at the gas station just ahead. My heart raced as I watched my husband, Tom, get the men's room key from a uniformed soldier with a rifle. A few miles down the dirt road, we passed an army barracks and saw...

ANCIENT OLYMPIA, Greece -- Firefighters backed by aircraft dropped water and foam on the birthplace of the ancient Olympics yesterday to stop wildfires from burning the 2,800-year-old ruins, one of the most revered sites of antiquity. But the fires burning for three straight days obliterated vast tracts of the country and the death toll rose to 60. New fires broke out faster than others could be brought under control. Desperate residents appealed through television stations for help from a firefighting service already stretched to the limit, and many blamed...

The wife of fired Syracuse University assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine claimed Wednesday that ESPN maliciously trampled her reputation by broadcasting salacious stories about her and about claims that her husband molested ball boys. Laurie Fine held a news conference Wednesday and threatened to file a libel lawsuit in federal court against the cable network and two employees. ESPN in November broke the story of two former Syracuse ball boys, Robert Davis and Michael Lang, who claimed they were molested by Bernie Fine decades ago. "I'm here today as a wife and a mother who...

BLUFF— Just south of the monumental face of Cedar Mesa, a series of multi-story sandstone statues rises abruptly out of the desert. Locals call these cliffs and monoliths the Valley of the Gods. When my fiance, Andrew, and I drove through at sunset one November evening, the name seemed fitting. The slanted light turned the sandstone buttes into a thousand shifting hues of pink and purple, and the flat valley floor seemed to stretch forever. The road was even more spectacular as we wound up an oxbowed road to the top of the mesa and the sunlight drained from...

Glimmers of hope are coming to this devastated capital and its surrounding cities, as the concrete Royal Oasis hotel rises over a metropolitan area still filled with displaced-persons camps housing hundreds of thousands. Signs of Haiti's comeback can also be seen in the 105-room Best Western hotel being built within blocks of shanty-covered hillsides. At least seven hotels are under construction or are in the planning stage in Port-au-Prince and its surrounding areas, raising hopes that thousands of investors will soon fill their air-conditioned rooms looking to build factories and...

Just a few years ago, before the Bruins became relevant again in our town - their season-ticket base floating in the 5,000-6,000 backwater - my good pal Dan Shaughnessy, blunt as always, asked me, "Why do you waste your time covering the Bruins? Nobody cares about hockey. " At the time, we were in the Fenway Park press box, where I happened to feel I was wasting an otherwise magnificent summer's day. The tortoise-like pace of baseball and self-absorption of its players (especially those in red socks)

Nate McMillan could not behave as if it were a normal blowout loss, because it wasn't. His team was lethargic and uninterested from the opening tip. In one sequence Friday, little-used Celtic Sasha Pavlovic stole the ball and streaked for a score and LaMarcus Aldridge pulled up and allowed an uncontested layup. That was the first half, when the Blazers appeared to show McMillan their lack of urgency for a team nearing life support. The consensus at Blazers practice Thursday at Emerson College was that this six-game road trip that began Wednesday with a loss in Minnesota was...

WEST LIBERTY, Ky. - Across the South and Midwest, survivors emerged yesterday to find blue sky and splinters where homes once stood, cars were flung into buildings, and communications were crippled after dozens of tornadoes chainsawed through a region of millions, leveling small towns along the way. At least 38 people were killed in five states, but a 2-year-old girl was somehow found alive and alone in a field near her Indiana home. Her family did not survive. A couple that fled their home for the safety of a restaurant basement made it, even after...

WHO: Dave Atchason, 64, of Beverly, Carol Lielasus, 61, of Ashby, and Marianne Page, 62, of Derry, N.H. WHERE: Peru WHEN: Two weeks in April WHY: The friends, all hikers and members of the Appalachian Mountain Club, wanted to trek part of the Inca Trail to the famed ruins of Machu Picchu, 7,872 feet up in the Andes, and also visit the imposing Lake Titicaca, which sits at an elevation of 12,566 feet. FIRST, TAKE A BREATH: Page, who is in training to lead hikes for the AMC, planned the trip online.

BACALAR, Mexico — The water’s full expression of blue — from aquamarine to turquoise, indigo to azure — gently tugs at me, inviting me to venture in. This same sensation can be felt on the white sand beaches of the Caribbean or the Maldives, but something sets Mexico’s Bacalar Lagoon apart. I can’t quite put my finger on it until I cup the water in my hands and pour it over my hair and face to cool off. The water is fresh. I can dive into it and swim with my eyes open, taking everything in. This pristine place, colloquially...

At the start of Keija Parssinen's absorbing debut novel, "The Ruins of Us," 47-year-old Rosalie al-Baylani attempts to tuck her hijab over her distinctive red tresses after a strong desert breeze lifts up the folds of fabric. "The absence of pins forced her to tuck the fabric's long edge close to her chin," writes the author, "making her look like a tourist who had never learned to properly veil herself. " Indeed, Rosalie is far from a tourist to this distant land: A Texan by birth but a Saudi by marriage, Rosalie has created an opulent life with her successful husband, Abdullah, and their...