New Delhi, Oct. 21 -- Crews strip the East Wing as a 999 seat ballroom tests preservation, money and power

Washington , The sound that carried across the South Grounds on Monday was not the ceremonial music of an arrival or the whisper of tourists on a spring afternoon, but the churn of demolition equipment biting into brick and plaster. By midday, stretches of the East Wing facade were stripped away, the colonnaded entry partially sheared, windows removed, and the scaffolding of a new political and architectural fight set in place , a scene that arrives amid city-scale marches questioning presidential spectacle as demolition work to prepare a presidential ballroom moved into public view and wire services documented crews and barricades....