Stooped from old age and disease, the four surviving leaders of Pol Pot's communist revolution of 1975, which left perhaps 2 million people dead, at last entered the dock to stand trial at a special tribunal here on Monday. Facing charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, they are accused of leaving this tiny nation in ruins after nearly four years of mass murder and enslavement with the greatest number of victims in any trial ...

In 2001, a burly anchorage longshoreman named Scott Heyworth turned up in the nearby town of Wasilla for a meeting with its mayor, Sarah Palin. Heyworth, a local Democratic activist, had grown tired of waiting for the Big Three oil companies to tap their huge natural-gas reserves in the state's North Slope, the long swatch of northern Alaska tundra that includes the largest oil and gas fields in North America. For decades, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and British Petroleum had little incentive ...

Ana Idolo may be too young to order her own food, but the 2-year-old knows what she wants. As her father Marco unpacks the Happy Meal he ordered for her at a Barcelona McDonald's, she ignores the chicken nuggets and French fries, and instead holds out her hand in eager anticipation for the best part of the meal: a small plastic statue of the Star Wars character Yoda. "Sometimes I think we just buy these for the toys," says ...

The "vast right-wing conspiracy" that attacked him during his presidency has been weakened, but continues to operate against President Obama, former President Clinton said Sunday. On NBC's "Meet the Press," Clinton was asked about the term his wife Hillary Clinton, now secretary of state, famously coined. "Is it still there" host David Gregory asked. "Oh, you bet. Sure it is. It's not as strong as it was, because America's changed demographically, but it's as virulent as it was," the former ...

One of America's pre-eminent political power couples made a rare joint appearance Friday, when Bill and Hillary Clinton took the stage at the former president's Clinton Global Initiative conference. "I want to begin by expressing my extreme indebtedness to the Clinton Global Initiative, to all of you who participated, for giving me the first chance I have had in a week to see Hillary," Bill Clinton told the audience of social activists and business leaders at the closing session of ...

Through all the sessions and workshops at the Clinton Global Initiative, the financial crisis was undeniably the elephant in the room. For most, philanthropy had taken a back seat to the economic situation. All the attention now was squarely focused on how the world economy will play out. So perhaps one of the most hotly anticipated sessions was the one entirely dedicated to this all-consuming turmoil. Twin crises Leading finance prophets dissected and debated the issues with ...

Before I moved to California, I enjoyed voting. Once every four years, I thought very deeply for a very long time about the presidential candidates and then voted for the Democrat. I left the crappy high school gym knowing I had voted for a government that would bring progress and change, ignoring the fact that the high school gym kept getting crappier. But once I got to Los Angeles, I learned that the East Coast version of democracy ...

Belarus is in many ways a post-Soviet nation in name only. Its state security service is still called the KGB and the iron-fisted rule of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has led the U.S. State Department to dub the country "Europe's last dictatorship." U.S.-based nongovernmental organization Freedom House included the country in its "Worst of the Worst 2009" report released earlier this month, naming Belarus one of the 21 most repressive places in the world. Which makes the European Union's March 20 ...

Cell phone makers Tuesday pledged to end one of modern life's chief frustrations --- and introduce a universal charger for handsets by 2012. The GSMA (Groupe Speciale Mobile Association), which represents more than 750 of the world's cell phone operators, made the announcement at its annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Tuesday. Under the scheme, phone makers have pledged that a majority of new handset models will include the universal charger by January 1 2012. The planned device will use ...