For almost all major politicians, life is never private. Silvio Berlusconi is a fine example. Even if one wanted to, it would be hard not to know the latest about his family life, indeed his various dalliances. Politicians across the western world usually just have to deal with life in a fishbowl. Except for one: Berlusconi's old friend and vacation mate, Vladimir Putin, who has managed to impose an information blockade around his private life that most ...

In his first interview with TIME, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down with reporter Laura Locke to talk about Facebook's rapid growth spurt, IPO rumors, future plans and the pressures of being a 23-year-old CEO in Silicon Valley. TIME: Facebook is undergoing a huge period of growth. With more than 150,000 new users signing up daily, it is growing three times as fast as rival MySpace. What do you attribute that spike to? Zuckerberg: For a while we actually constrained our growth. ...

Prescription pads, clipboards and patient charts are so 20th century. In the era of CT scans, gene-splicing and stem-cell breakthroughs, handwritten record-keeping feels about as outmoded as the fluoroscope. It's more than just strangely retro; it's fantastically expensive. Health care in the U.S. costs a jaw-dropping $2 trillion annually, or more than $6,600 for every man, woman and child in the country. Streamlining the industry by eliminating medical errors, labor costs and general clunkiness caused by paperwork alone ...

Two senior U.S. senators are expected to introduce Tuesday legislation to establish an Internet consumer bill of rights, moving the needle in the burgeoning debate over how to protect individuals without impeding one of the country's few growth sectors. The bill, by Sen. John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Sen. John McCain, Republican of Arizona, would create the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights, and if passed it would force companies to give consumers more control over how their ...

At 678, California has the nation's largest death row population, yet the state has not executed anyone in four years. But it spends more than $130 million a year on its capital punishment system -- housing and prosecuting inmates and coping with an appellate system that has kept some convicted killers waiting for an execution date since the late 1970s. This is according to a new report that concludes that states are wasting millions on an inefficient death penalty system, ...

An American father jailed in Tokyo has been harshly treated in the Japanese prison system, his attorney said Monday. Attorney Jeremy Morley, in a statement released Monday, said Christopher Savoie -- accused of trying to kidnap his children after his ex-wife took them to Japan -- is being held without trial, interrogated without an attorney present and denied needed medical treatment for high blood pressure. Savoie has also been exposed to sleep deprivation, and denied private meetings with attorneys ...

Three suspects have been arrested in the August slaying of 12 indigenous Awa people in southwestern Colombia, the military announced Tuesday. The three men, at least one of whom is believed to belong to the Marxist guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, were members of Los Cucarachos crime gang, Colombian Defense Minister Gabriel Silva said. Los Cucarachos are involved in drug trafficking, extortion and kidnappings, the minister said. The robbery of 3 million Colombian pesos ($1,550) appears to have ...

Early in the morning of Sept. 29, an earthquake deep under the Pacific caused a massive tsunami to devastate the islands of Samoa and American Samoa, killing 111 people, devastating villages and flattening homes. The earthquake itself struck at 6:48 a.m., measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale. By 7:04 a.m., an emergency alert from the Tsunami Warning System, a global network of sensors monitored by scientists, went out. Less than 10 minutes later, the tsunami, with waves measuring nearly ...

When we requested an interview with members of the Communist Youth League, I expected an army of suits with well-rehearsed answers. Instead, we met three students casually dressed in jeans, just 18 to 23 years old. The interview was arranged by the State Council Information Office, in advance of the upcoming 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Unlike many government-sanctioned shoots, it was not carefully choreographed or closely monitored. The students did arrive with a ...

Watch out for the latest scam targeting veterans and their credit card numbers, the Department of Veterans Affairs warns. Scam artists are calling veterans and posing as VA workers who need credit card information to update prescription information, as part of a scheme that fraudsters have recycled over the years. "America's veterans have become targets in an inexcusable scam that dishonors their service and misrepresents the department built for them," said Dr. Gerald Cross, the VA's undersecretary for health. "VA ...