What could be more French than sex? More sex, as it turns out — especially if you happen to be a woman. Nearly 40 years after France's May 1968 revolution spawned the slogan "pleasure without obstruction," a new study finds that the French of both genders are engaging in more varied and frequent sex than ever before — and both earlier and later into life. Yet perhaps the most significant finding in the report is that French women have ...

A United States soldier captured by the Taliban says in a video posted on the Internet he is "scared I won't be able to go home." The soldier was identified Sunday by the Pentagon as Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, of Ketchum, Idaho. He was captured June 30 from Paktika province in southeastern Afghanistan. The Taliban has threatened to kill Bergdahl if foreign troops continue targeting civilians in the name of search operations in Ghazni and Paktika province, Taliban commander ...

Indonesian police have recovered a laptop that they believe belonged to one of the bombers of Friday's twin hotel attacks in Jakarta, the country's official news agency said Sunday. The laptop contained information and codes that the attackers may have used to communicate with each other, the state-run Antara News Agency said. The computer was found in a room at the Ritz Carlton, one of two hotels targeted Friday. The other site was the JW Marriott. The blasts killed nine ...

President Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua's macho and mustachioed Sandinista commandante of the 1970s and '80s, may claim the mantle of revolutionary "new man," but Latin America's feminists insist Ortega is a dirty old man. Throughout the continent, Ortega is being hounded by feminist groups over his alleged sexual abuse of stepdaughter Zoilamerica Narvaez during the 1980s. The allegation first surfaced in 1998, but was eventually dismissed by a Sandinista judge without investigation or trial — despite an investigation ...

When Glynis McCants looks at Michael Jackson's life, she sees the number five. Jackson's talent was discovered when he was 5 years old, he came to fame as a member of the Jackson 5 and he planned a series of 50 concert dates in London, England, as part of a comeback tour before he died on June 25 at the age of 50. For McCants, a noted numerologist and author, those facts are very telling: "Five is the number for ...

It was December, the start of a dreary Russian winter, and Barack Obama's face was staring down at pedestrians walking along Moscow's gray streets. But the photograph of the U.S. President wearing a black suit and a smile had nothing to do with his election win a month earlier. It was part of an ad for a chain of tanning salons called Sun People, which was using Obama's picture to promote the benefits of booking some time in their ...

NASA and Japan improved our world view this week, or at least our view of the world. The American space agency and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry have released a new digital topographic map of Earth that accurately portrays more of our planet than ever before. The new map consists of 1.3 million images taken by NASA's Terra satellite that have been pieced together to form a unified picture of the planet. The images were taken by a ...

The picture says it all. The shot of 14-year-old Curtis D. Tucker shows him unrolling one of his birthday treasures in 1976, mouth slightly agape and eyes intensely focused on the gift. The present was one he had fervently requested from his parents and a hot item for many a young, red-blooded male during that bicentennial year: a poster of Farrah Fawcett (then known as Farrah Fawcett-Majors). "I was a huge Farrah fan," said Tucker, now a cartoonist and entrepreneur ...

Michael Jackson had a level of hero worship on a par with Elvis Presley or the Beatles but he was the first black star to inspire such a massive following around the world. Total worldwide sales of more than 350 million records over his 40-year career give just a hint of the adoration there was for the "King of Pop." The fact that his death came on the eve of a comeback tour in London will leave his devotees feeling ...

The decisive margin of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory in elections last week stunned many observers and angered his opponents' supporters, who in the ensuing days took to the streets in protest by the hundreds of thousands. The decisive margin of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory in elections last week stunned many observers and angered his opponents' supporters, who in the ensuing days took to the streets in protest by the hundreds of thousands. At least eight people ...