City overview: New York

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New York is an instantly recognizable brand -- the ultimate distillation of metropolitan living and the imperial city of American capitalism.

Nowhere else has been so mythologized by popular culture. Entire musical genres -- disco, punk and hip-hop -- were shaped there. The sidewalks, subway and skyline have inspired a lifetime of work by Gothamite auteurs such as Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. That creativity reflects New York's restless kinetic energy. Everyone here is making something, whether it's money, music or margaritas.

The huddled masses these days are more likely to be stockbrokers crammed on a downtown train, but nowhere in the world can match New York's diversity. Wave after wave of immigrants have adopted corners of the city as their own, creating an interlinked patchwork of communities from every country and culture on earth.

New Yorkers may be infamous straight talkers with an inflated sense of their own importance, but spend any time in the city and you'll begin to appreciate why. Swept along amid the jarring cacophony it's impossible not to have the sense of being part of some great spectacle, conducted by some invisible hand.

But there are pockets of peace. The green woods of Central Park offer a breathing space from the breakneck speed of the city; and the quieter halls and corridors of New York's museums and galleries are havens for contemplation and reflection before heading back to the hyperactive, hysterical and self-obsessively hip existence that is life in the Big Apple.

Taliban video said to show captured U.S. soldier The Taliban's release of a new video purportedly showing a captured American soldier in Afghanistan "is a horrible act," a U.S. military official said Friday.

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