Frida Ghitis entered the news business in 1981, when she joined CNN only a few months after the launch of the first 24-hour news network. She was unit manager, producer and correspondent, traveling to major news events all over the globe. She has worked in more than 50 countries in virtually every region of the world. During her time at CNN she was part of the teams that covered the collapse of the Soviet Union from Russia, the 1991 Gulf War from Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. intervention in Haiti, the hostage crisis in Peru, multiple developments in Cuba, political conventions in the United States and a dozen presidential trips, from Ronald Reagan in Mexico and Madrid, to George HW Bush in Singapore and Somalia.
After leaving CNN in 2000 she authored "The End of Revolution: a Changing World in the Age of Live Television." She writes about world affairs for a variety of publications, and travels all over the world -- from Baghdad to Buenos Aires -- as an independent journalist.
In addition to The Miami Herald, her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The International Herald Tribune, The Jerusalem Report and dozens of publications in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.
She grew up in Colombia and later moved to the United States, where she attended Emory University in Atlanta. She holds a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in political science.
The memories from the Clinton-Lewinsky days seem almost quaint by now, but at the time the questions for editorial decision-makers were excruciating. What language can you use on television when the facts of a story include sexual or otherwise offensive content?
COMMENTARY
When I was growing up in Colombia many years ago, kidnappings were already becoming common occurrences. The prospect of captivity was terrifying, even if the news of acquaintances and their families falling into that dreaded purgatory became less and less rare.
FOCUS ON ISRAEL
In a land that never lacks for intense emotions, a moment will come in just a few days when the two extremes of joy and sadness will overflow at precisely the same time. Through the dramatizing magic of modern technology, we will watch those scenes from our living rooms:
MIDDLE EAST
In the political minefield that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the issue of Jerusalem hangs like a hornet's nest on a limb over a pile of unexploded ordnance. That's why many people caught their breath recently when Sen. Barack Obama, fresh from securing the Democratic nomination, walked through that field and stood face to face with the humming problem. Obama grabbed the Jerusalem hornet's nest and shook it hard. Or at least it seemed that way for about 24 hours.
FOCUS ON ISRAEL
While Arab and Israeli peace negotiators expend their energy trying not to bolt out of their seats in exasperation, businessmen and women on both sides think they may have just found a way to peace that will prove faster, more entertaining and definitely more profitable. Driven more by a quest for profits than by ideology, Arab and Israeli entrepreneurs are quietly working together on a variety of ventures.
BURMA
During a visit to Burma a few years ago, I decided to avoid the country's legendarily deadly airlines and instead hire a car to take me along the somewhat less deadly roads. Distances that on the map looked like they should take an hour to cover took entire days.
FOCUS ON ISRAEL
An intriguing theory has made the rounds in the scientific community for many years, claiming the existence of ''parallel universes,'' worlds that resemble ours but in which one event may have turned differently, sending the entire course of history in a different direction.
ENERGY
Will ''alternative'' energy ever dethrone oil as the king of fuels? That question came more than 150 years ago, when the king of fuels was oil -- whale oil. Back then, Nantucket and New Bedford were the Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi of whale oil production. People once thought that it would last forever.
