If you've had your fill of moonlit beach walks and peach-colored drinks, try something altogether different. I recently spoke with several couples whose idea of a passionate vacation involved less hand-holding and more giving a hand: they spent their vacation time volunteering. Jamie Cann and his wife, Mary, returned recently from a trip to Tanzania. Jamie spent his days in a home for orphans and vulnerable children, teaching English and playing soccer with the kids. Mary taught English and math ...

The problem facing President Barack Obama in Latin America is that under the peevishness and negligence of his predecessor, the continent saw a stunning expansion of the anti-U.S. left. The solution to that problem may be Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who on Saturday becomes the first Latin American leader to visit the Obama White House — an invitation that all but anoints him as President Obama's liaison to the region. Smart choice, because the gravelly voiced ...

The United Nations is urging countries to invest in green jobs working with "sustainable forest management" to address the growing problem of unemployment worldwide. At least 10 million such jobs could be created, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization will say in a report to be released this week. The report does not mention any countries but is aimed at "mainly regions with substantial rural unemployment and degraded land areas," said C.T.S. Nair, chief economist in the U.N. Forestry Department ...

Over the last few weeks, the newspaper industry has entered a new period of decline. The parent of the papers in Philadelphia declared bankruptcy as did the Journal Register chain. The Rocky Mountain News closed and the Seattle Post Intelligencer, owned by Hearst, will almost certainly close or only publish online. Hearst has said it will also close The San Francisco Chronicle if it cannot make massive cuts at the paper. The most recent rumor is that the company ...

The case of the pregnant 9-year-old was shocking enough. But it was the response of the Catholic Church that infuriated many Brazilians. Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. "God's laws," said ...

Whatever differences might exist between former Cuban President Fidel Castro and his younger brother, President Raúl Castro, the most important is style. Fidel values a fiery belly full of political ideology; Raúl prizes a cooler head equipped with administrative acumen. The latter has been at the forefront ever since the ailing Fidel, 82, ceded power to Raúl, 77, last year. But this week Raúl's m.o. emerged in ways that could eventually facilitate the tentative but growing efforts in Washington and ...

The world might be sinking into its worst recession in generations, but China is on a wild shopping spree. Sitting some $2 trillion of cash reserves, Beijing is taking advantage of the woes of others to cement its grip on new sources of commodities ranging from olive oil to crude oil —often at fire-sale prices. China's growth rate may be slowing in concert with the world economy, but even at that slower ...

Court hearings began Friday for 11 people, including two Spanish professional football players and a Serb-French football agent, who were arrested this week on charges of cocaine smuggling, a police source told CNN. The 11 are accused of taking advantage of their football contacts in Latin America, and their trips to the region, to organize the drug trafficking. Spanish police made the arrests on Thursday, mainly in Madrid, and seized 600 kilos (1,320 pounds) of cocaine they alleged had been ...

Could the deepening global recession boost the flagging efforts of Osama bin Laden to challenge the established global order? Probably not. But the signs are there that, as President Barack Obama's intelligence chief Admiral Dennis Blair warned last week, the economic crisis may be the source of the primary threat to global security right now. Security experts note that the economic downturn is already creating social unrest and political instability in some strategic hot spots around the world, and they ...

No one, especially not one of Mexico's top law enforcement officials, denies that killings by drug cartels have reached record levels. But Monte Alejandro Rubido Garcia, executive secretary for the National System for Public Safety, has an explanation. "Mexico all of a sudden stopped being a drug-transit country and became a drug-consuming country," Rubido told CNN on Thursday. That means gangs that once shipped drugs into the United States are now fighting each other to sell the drugs at home, ...