Convened in Washington, in November 2008, the first G-20 summit was a hasty attempt by top economies to forge common cause against a rapidly escalating financial crisis. That initial consensus risks unraveling at the G-20's fourth summit, in Toronto on June 26-27, with the U.S. and the European Union notably parting ways on how best to restore economic health. The summit follows an extraordinary austerity drive by European economies as they attempt to redress their public finances. In ...

There are illegal immigrants on the loose in the Midwest. Originally hailing from Asia, they're about 3 ft. long and weigh up to 100 lb. , and are known to resist capture. Once they establish residency, they can eat you out of house and home. They're called Asian carp, and they emigrated to the lower reaches of the Mississippi River in the 1970s. Now they're knocking on the door of the Great Lakes, threatening to destroy ...

One of the most encouraging developments to come out of the TIME/ABC News Summit on Obesity earlier this month was an emerging consensus among nutrition experts about what constitutes a healthy diet. Here, one of America's most prominent diet gurus summarizes key points of agreement. As a veteran of the diet wars, I think it's time to call a truce. Rather than hear experts argue, most people want practical information they can use. Significant points ...

THE BLEEDING HEART by Marilyn French Summit; 377 pages; $12.95 The bestseller is the AK-47 of the women's liberation movement. It has proved to be a highly effective weapon: relatively cheap, easy to mass produce, reliable and deadly even in inexperienced hands. A case in point was Marilyn French's first novel, The Women's Room . It hit middle-class America at the right time. Consciousness was up; stale marriages were crumbling like mummies exposed to the air; Jacks were breaking their ...

In November 1989 word went out that Mikhail Gorbachev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, would stop in Rome en route to a summit meeting with President George Bush. In Rome he would have an audience with Pope John Paul II. This was glasnost, 200 proof. The head of the communist world had bumped into the answer to Stalin's question: How many divisions has the Pope? And the Pope was engaging in spiritual geopolitics at summit ...

Elizabeth Fedorchalk was tired of being fat. She had been trying to lose weight since elementary school, but diets never made a difference. She wasn't husky. She wasn't big-boned. By age 16, the 5-ft. 5-in., 291-lb. high school junior from Holts Summit, Mo., was undeniably obese. And each year, it was only getting worse. Fedorchalk's diet was abysmal. She skipped breakfast, ate lunch at school — usually chicken strips and fries — and frequently had dinner at McDonald's: a burger ...

While NATO foreign ministers ended their meeting in Berlin on Friday with a show of unity in the military campaign against Libya, the two-day summit had exposed further cracks in the alliance — and now questions are being asked about whether NATO's air strikes are being ramped up from protecting civilians to all-out regime change. Russia, which isn't involved in the campaign, is particularly wary of any signs of mission creep and reiterated its calls for a political ...

The human rights group Amnesty International is calling on Nigeria to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir if he attends an African Union Summit there on Thursday.

It's the end of an era. Gamal Helal, the longtime Arabic translator to four presidents and six secretaries of state, wrapped up his last day at the State Department on Thursday. Helal was one of the only constants in U.S. Mideast policy over the past 19 years, helping the United States navigate both wars with Iraq, the war between Israel and Lebanon, and Israeli operations in Gaza. During every major peace summit -- Madrid, Oslo, Wye and the 2000 Camp ...

As campaigning was closing for the German presidential election Sunday, attention was already turning to what coalition will rule the country. Few doubt that Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, CDU, will win most votes. So, will Merkel continue the current center right-center left 'grand coalition' with the Social Democrats or will the votes suffice for a coalition with the business liberal but centrist Liberal Democrats or the FDP, a constellation Germans refer to as 'Black-Yellow.' At a press conference ostensibly ...