Forty years ago, a group of young people led by a charismatic, 5-foot-2-inch ex-con named Charles Manson set out on a murderous spree in Los Angeles, California. They planned to spark an apocalyptic race war that Manson called "Helter Skelter," after a song by the Beatles. Over two nights in August 1969, the killers took the lives of seven people, inflicting 169 stab wounds and seven .22-caliber gunshot wounds. They used the blood of their victims to scrawl anti-establishment messages ...

A series of bombings mostly targeting day laborers killed 46 people and wounded 215 in Iraq on Monday, the Ministry of Interior said. Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karrubi, along with former reformist President Mohammad Khatami, should be tried for attempting to lead a Western-backed "velvet revolution" that aimed to topple the regime, the official said. "If Moussavi, Khatami ... and Karrubi are the main suspects believed to have been behind the velvet coup in Iran, which ...

Australia completed a comprehensive victory over England in the fourth Ashes Test at Headingley, Leeds, winning by an innings and 80 runs inside three days to level the series at 1-1 with just the deciding Test match at The Oval still to play. Resuming the third morning in a seemingly impossible position, trailing by 261 runs on 82 for five after Australia's first innings 445, England's daunting task became all the more difficult when they lost two wickets inside the ...

With its awful name and convoluted rules, the cash-for-clunkers program might well have been a flop, yet it turned into a surprising success, even inspiring many of its critics to call for an additional $2 billion in funding. One big reason: the program boosted July 2009 sales of new cars and trucks, giving the economy a bit of a lift. Some of the biggest gains during July were posted by small foreign carmakers such as ...

For the voracious consumer of movies and TV shows old and new, the Netflix mail-order rental service is both useful and annoying. It is also addictive. I speak as a four-at-a-time subscriber who carefully manages and updates his queue of titles, closely monitors their return to the Netflix depot and waits anxiously for the postman to bring the next stash. Here, based on five months of obsessive use, of pleasure and frustration in roughly equal amounts, are five ways ...

Israel's foreign minister will resign from the post if he is indicted on corruption charges, he said Monday. Israeli police Sunday recommended charging Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman with a slew of crimes following a lengthy corruption probe. Investigators "believe there is sufficient evidence to charge him with the crimes of bribery, fraud, obstruction of justice, harassing a witness, breach of trust and money laundering offenses," the police spokesman's office said in a statement. The alleged crimes date back to before ...

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi and reformist former President Mohammad Khatami on Sunday blasted the trials of people arrested in post-election demonstrations. Those on trial had been tortured into confessions, Moussavi said in a statement posted on his Ghalam News Web site. "They have been stepped on so severely that they would have confessed to anything else, had they been instructed to do so," Moussavi said. Nearly 100 Iranians arrested in the aftermath of the disputed June 12 presidential ...

In the afternoon, as the hour for the protests grew closer, many offices in the Iranian capital began shutting down or running with a bare-bones staff. Workers began leaving to assemble at protest sites, traveling by way of the clogged subway, by cab or on foot. "I'm not scared," said a banker as he headed for the sprawling Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, where many opposition "martyrs," including the iconic Neda Agha-Soltan, have been buried. He says the planned memorial service ...

The families of three British hostages held in Iraq for more than two years are due to make a statement Wednesday amid British press reports that two of the men are dead. Take the case of Minnesota residents Kevin Heinz and Jill Peterson. The couple had a fun idea for their wedding party to do a nontraditional procession to a catchy tune, "Forever" by Chris Brown. The joyous video of the group busting their loosely choreographed moves down the aisle ...

Prominent Iranian reformist Saeed Hajjarian will be released from jail Wednesday, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported. A spokesman for Iran's courts announced Hajjarian's release, prompted by a recent order by Iran's judicial chief to expedite the processing of files for all those arrested in post-election demonstrations, Fars said. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Hajjarian, a reformist journalist and former adviser to President Mohammed Khatami, was detained in Tehran's Evin prison on June 15. The ...