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 ...

Agricultural policy is not sexy. You probably don't know the intricacies of "loan deficiency payments" or "base acreage," and you probably don't care. This was once an agrarian nation, but now there's a less than 1% chance that you're a farmer, and if you are, you're probably part time; the average farm family gets 82% of its income from nonfarm sources. We're not a people of the soil anymore, and for most of us, our eyes glaze over when we ...

A California high school student who police said was gang raped in a two-and-a-half-hour assault outside a homecoming dance remained hospitalized in stable condition Monday, three days after she was flown from the attack scene in critical condition."We have checked Facebook and YouTube to try to find any revealing evidence," Gagan said. "We're looking in particular to see if anyone posted any video of the incident." Five other individuals were detained at the scene but not arrested, Simon said. The ...

She lost her career, was ostracized and driven to a suicide attempt. Having lost her 2006 Asian Games silver for failing a gender test, India's Santhi Soundarajan has made an emotional appeal that Caster Semenya should not be subject to the trauma she went through. The Olympic Council of Asia stripped Santhi of the silver medal she won in the 800m in Qatar, saying she had been "disqualified as per the recommendations of the medical committee on a Games rule ...

To: Interested parties From: John King, CNN chief national correspondent Re: The Monday Memo (CNN) -- From start to finish, this week offers tests of whether economic recovery is taking root and also should answer whether months of Senate negotiations on health lead to a bill with any Republican support. First, the economy. President Obama heads to Wall Street, exactly one year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, to offer his assessment of whether the financial sector and the overall ...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned home Friday after a sometimes controversial nine-country tour and said he had purchased weapons from Russia. Chavez appeared on Venezuelan news channel Globovision in Caracas, and he had a message about a purchase he made in Russia. "By the way, we signed some military agreements with Russia. Well ... soon will arrive some little rockets," Chavez said. "We are not going to attack anyone. ... Those are only defense instruments because we are going to ...

President Barack Obama told British Prime Minister Gordon Brown he was disappointed that the Lockerbie bomber had been released from jail, the White House said Thursday in a statement. "The president expressed his disappointment over the Scottish Executive's decision to release convicted Pan Am 103 bomber (Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed) al Megrahi back to Libya," the White House said. Al Megrahi, the only person convicted over the 1988 bombing that killed 270 people over Lockerbie in Scotland, was released from prison ...

Cosmetic adverts in Asia are targeting men with blunt campaigns aimed at skin color that one lawmaker labels racist. In one TV commercial, two men, one with dark skin, the other with light skin; stand on a balcony overlooking a neighborhood. The dark skin guy turns to his friend and says in Hindi, "I am unlucky because of my face." His light skin friend replies, "Not because of your face, because of the color of your face." Suddenly the light ...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday said his claim that enhanced interrogation techniques -- including waterboarding -- produced critical post-9/11 information was supported by a pair of intelligence reports released last week. "The enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives," he told "Fox News Sunday." However, the two dossiers that were declassified at Cheney's request do not disclose what kinds of techniques were used to elicit the intelligence. The only method occasionally cited by ...

Nearly 1,300 computers in more than 100 countries have been attacked and have become part of an computer espionage network apparently based in China, security experts alleged in two reports Sunday. Computers -- including machines at NATO, governments and embassies -- are infected with software that lets attackers gain complete control of them, according to the reports. One was issued by the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies in conjunction with the Ottawa, Canada-based think tank The SecDev ...