News Snapshot:
Large garbage bags had been used to cover up the magnificent tau tau — funeral effigies — standing over the swimming pool to avoid offending the guests. “The statues made it very obvious who the guy and who the gal are,” the president of the energy giant Unocal, Marty Miller, gingerly explained. The shrouding had been mandated by a consultant hired to make sure cultural miscommunication did not end up sabotaging the $4.5 billion pipeline deal the oil tycoon hoped to seal over dinner that evening in 1997. The dinner went well: A photograph records the beaming madrasa-educated Taliban foreign...
