French President Nicolas Sarkozy has never hidden his infatuation with celebrities. In recent years Sarkozy has burst with pride while being photographed with the stars he likes to count as both political supporters and personal friends. In 2007, he even went and married one. But as Sarkozy's government tries to crack down on illegal Internet downloads of music and movies, suspicions have surfaced that the proposed regulation could be just another case of the President protecting his famous friends. ...

Women at two Kansas colleges are on edge after warnings that the same man may have raped 13 women at the schools in the last eight years. The University of Kansas and Kansas State University have alerted students to possible danger for those who stay in town during spring break, which starts Monday. Thirteen rapes have happened during breaks in the school year in the last eight years near the colleges. Eight happened near Kansas State University in Manhattan. Five ...

Paul Harvey, the legendary radio host whose career sharing "the rest of the story" with listeners spanned more than 70 years, has died, according to ABC Radio Networks. He was 90. Harvey died at a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, where he kept a winter home, said Louis Adams, a spokesman for the networks. He was surrounded by family members when he died, Adams said. Known for his deliberate delivery and pregnant pauses, Harvey's broadcasts were heard on over 1,200 ...

Twenty years after revolution swept communism from Eastern Europe, the region is in the middle of another maelstrom. The global economic crisis has hit countries like Latvia, Hungary and Poland particularly hard. Eastern Europe's boom over the past few years was fueled in part by heavy borrowing from Western banks and easy access to foreign currency denominated loans. Now, with credit dried up, huge debt loads to pay and Eastern European currencies in free fall, the good times are ...

There's a motorcycle-taxi stand near my home in Bangkok, and many of the drivers' hands are dirty. Not from urban grime or motor oil, but from newsprint. Fueled by a growing literacy rate and press reforms in some parts of the continent, Asia is enjoying what may be the world's last great newspaper boom. Eight of the world's 10 biggest paid-for daily newspapers are printed in Asia, according to the World Association of Newspapers . The largest national newspaper markets? ...

This story has been updated. Gunmen have started dumping bodies down the hillside garbage chute in La Silsa. The slum, one of the poorest that ring Caracas, was crime-ridden when I was a teacher there in the 1980s. But residents like housewife Gladys Rodríguez tell me the barrio has become a killing field over the past few years, and that corpses are sometimes found atop the rubbish pile below her street. "That's what things have come to," says Rodríguez, 36. ...

Don't spend more than you make. Don't buy things you don't need. Save for a rainy day. If Americans had followed these simple rules over the past decade, there would be no financial crisis, no worst-since-the-1930s recession, no acrimonious Washington debate over what to do about it. Now we seem to be starting to rediscover thrift. Debt levels are falling. Consumer spending is down. The savings rate is on the rise. Great, right Not exactly. The sudden sobering up ...