TIME.com

ONLINE CHATS

Every week, TIME writers and editors chat on AOL about the news. This week talk concerns the war on the home front--the hunt for the anthrax killer--and the battle abroad. Go to AOL, Keyword: Live.

HOWARD CHUA-EOAN manages TIME's global network of correspondents and reporters. It's a difficult task even in the best times, but now it has been made even more complicated by the concurrent crises of terrorism, anthrax and the war in Afghanistan. Talk to Howard on Thursday at 8 p.m. E.T.

ADI IGNATIUS is the editor of the Asian edition of TIME and is the point person for our reporters in the field. Every day he faces questions like, How do you get money to the frontline camps? Answer: you wire it through the Northern Alliance's embassy in London. Chat with Adi on Monday at 8 p.m. E.T.

KAREN TUMULTY is TIME's national political correspondent in Washington and has been reporting from the capital on Bush's performance, Tom Ridge's game plan and the fact that politics, alas, injects itself everywhere, no matter what. Talk to her Tuesday at 8 p.m. E.T.

ROMESH RATNESAR got back from 18 months in London writing for TIME's international edition just in time to write last week's cover story on the ground war. He has combat duty again this week, writing on the battle in Afghanistan and the strategy to snare bin Laden. Talk to him Wednesday at 8 p.m. E.T.

Refugee Nation

There's an army not of soldiers but of refugees on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This week on TIME.com see Anthony Suau's revealing and moving photo essay "Life on the Lines," showing the displaced people on the border. Also, TIME.com's Tony Karon argues that such pictures will eventually make it harder for U.S. allies to continue to support the war. Want to help the refugees? We provide you with the websites of organizations sending food and medicine to Afghan refugees in Pakistan and elsewhere. Just go to time.com/refugees

WEB LORE

You have seen plenty of al-Jazeera, the Arabic satellite news channel, on CNN. Soon you will be able to read news from al-Jazeera in English. The station's website is currently in Arabic, and its traffic has lately increased from around 700,000 daily hits to 3 million. And about 40% of those visitors are from the U.S. The English version is scheduled for next year.

HOSTAGE CRISIS--ALMOST

TIME journalists generally try to avoid becoming part of the story, but last week correspondent Tim McGirk very nearly became a hostage of angry Afghan refugees in an ugly showdown along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. "They might've done it," writes McGirk. "They had nothing left to lose. No money. No country. Not much hope." Read McGirk's weekly war diary at time.com/mcgirk/

OPINION AND MORE OPINION

Not only do we get postcards from exotic places, we also feature our regular Washington and New York columnists.

DOUG WALLER, our Congressional columnist, writes that anthrax has "created a terror in this country no less intense and widespread than what erupted on Sept. 11."

RICHARD STENGEL, TIME.com's managing editor and a weekly columnist, writes that "every conflict has its signature medium," and in the case of the war on terrorism, it's the Internet.

JOHN DICKERSON, our White House columnist, writes about traveling with Bush to a conference in China, where "each leader is condemned to wear the gaudy shirt of his host country." Bush did so, he writes, "without looking goofy."

For these columns and more, go to time.com/columnist