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On Page One of the Sunday Week in Review, Anthony DePalma provides some soft soap for Fidel Castro's image: "With his bushy beard and his booming anti-American rhetoric, Mr. Castro, who turns 80 next Sunday, will linger in the Cuban imagination far into the future as a double image - one, the romantic revolutionary of 1958, promising Cuba equality, prosperity and independence; the other, the prisoner of a half-century of confrontation with the United States that kept Cuba from evolving in a way…

So Wal-Mart did a survey and found that the Bentonville, Ark.-based company isn't competitive in its wages. So like any major company responding to market pressures, it decided to raise its wages to attract and retain employees.Reports the Times's Michael Barbaro: Wal-Mart Stores, the nation's largest employer, said yesterday that it would raise starting salaries at one-third of its United States stores by about 6 percent. And the company also said it would impose a wage cap on certain…

     Marking the one-year anniversary of longtime smoker Peter Jennings’ death from lung cancer, ABC’s Dr. Timothy Johnson wrote up a prescription as outdated and ineffective as bleeding a patient: growing government.       “At the government level there are three proven techniques. One is to raise prices by increasing taxes, the second is to limit access by minors, and the third is to conduct mass media campaigns,” Johnson said on the August 7 “…

     Leave it to “60 Minutes” to find a negative development in a tide of American prosperity lifting all boats.       “The Joneses, that mythic family America vainly tries to keep up with, are setting an impossible standard,” correspondent Morley Safer complained on the August 6 program. “It’s the house, dammit. The size of the average new house in this country has grown almost 50 percent in the last 30 years while the average family has shrunk.”…

Disgraced Reuters freelance photographer Adnan Hajj was dismissed by the wire service for altering a photograph of a Lebanese skyline to make the damage caused by Israel look worse (big hat tip to Charles Johnston at Little Green Footballs, who first uncovered the fake photo). More photos by Hajj are being scrutinized, and at least one other photo has been proven to have been digitally altered. But before his disgrace, Hajj made the front page, above-the-fold of Saturday's New York Times with…

Middle East-based reporter Neil MacFarquhar files "Arab World Finds Icon in Leader of Hezbollah" from Damascus on Monday (with Hassan Fattah contributing reporting from Beirut). Again, MacFarquhar sees things from the pro-Arab, anti-Israel perspective. (Last week, MacFarquhar lamented on Charlie Rose's talk show how "in 40 years, we have gone from Kennedy milk to the Bush administration rushing bombs to this part of the world. And it just erodes and erodes and erodes America's reputation.")…

     Has CNN’s reporting on food gone to the dogs?        The audience of the August 5 edition of “In the Money” might suspect as much. On that program business contributor Andy Serwer narrated a “Brainstorm” segment looking at the “latest trends and innovations the food industry has in store for you” such as “foods you can eat along with your pet.”       Foods you can scarf down with Skippy while channel-surfing past CNN on…

     The CBS “Evening News” recently hinted that more regulation, not less, is needed to improve the nation’s electrical grid.        Reporter Trish Regan’s August 3 story displayed a chart showing an increase in the number of blackouts in the past few years. Regan then complained that after years of gradual price increases, many major electrical utilities are now increasing rates dramatically, including a 72-percent rate hike by the BGE, the utility…

"Cuba Perks Up as Venezuela's Lifeline Foils U.S. Embargo," blared the headline for Juan Forero's page A3 story in the August 4 New York Times.Relax, fair Times reader. The Cuban economy won't collapse under Raul Castro:BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Aug. 3 - As Raúl Castro takes up the task of leading Cuba in place of his brother Fidel, there is, surprisingly, one less thing he may have to worry about: the state of Cuba's economy.Forero goes on to hint that Cuba's woes as resulting from Bush administration…

The Times has four contributors to Line of Fire, its new blog about the conflict in Israel and Lebanon (Times Select $ may be required), none of whom line up on Israel's side. Gershom Gorenberg, Jerusalem bureau chief for The Forward newspaper, is at the top with the naval-gazing "No Easy Answers," and doesn't come up with any hard ones either, simply taking the pacifist take that there must be a better way than Israel counterattacking: "If, for instance, Hezbollah's initial attack on July 12…