It's time for y'all to put some gas in your tanks," shouts Billy Blanks. He cranks up the volume on the stereo, and the Billy Blanks' World Training Center in Sherman Oaks, Calif., is flooded with the ragged sounds of Rob Base & D.J. E-Z Rock and human agony. Teeth clenched, sweat dripping, 150 men and women kick out their right feet, then bow at the waist and kick back their left feet. "Lean, guys, lean!" commands Blanks, as he ...

The prospective decision by Japan's government to take control of the Tokyo Electric Power Company may seem belated to the rest of the world, given the confusing way the firm has managed the Fukishima nuclear reactor crisis. But it seems to reflect official recognition of the relatively quiet but deep public frustration with TEPCO. Indeed, while a large part of the rationale for potentially taking up to 50% of TEPCO may be to prevent Asia's largest ...

It is not every day that the military chief of the world's emerging superpower stops by a tiny Himalayan nation. So when General Chen Bingde, Chief of General Staff of China's People's Liberation Army, touched down in Kathmandu on March 23, all of Nepal was watching. Chen didn't disappoint: he signed a military-aid deal worth $20 million and promised that there was more to come. He also took the chance to comment on Chinese-Nepali relations, saying that ...

As a child, Stefaan Engels was diagnosed with asthma and told not to exert himself. Instead, the now 49-year-old Belgian started to run. A lot. But Engels needed a new challenge. So he decided to run 365 consecutive marathons over the course of a year, a new world record. TIME talked to Engels as he recuperated in Belgium. How are you feeling? Special. It's been four days and I've had to do interviews for the whole world. A new ...

He is now famous throughout Tunisia and the Arab world — a legend, in fact. But Mohammed Bouazizi never set out to be a byword. His aunt Radia Bouazizi says his dream was to save enough money to be able to rent or buy a pickup truck. "Not to cruise around in," she says, "but for his work." Her nephew was a vegetable seller. "He would come home tired after pushing the cart around all day. All ...

Censorship was lifted last week from one of the great scientific discoveries of World War II. It is an insecticide called DDT. DDT stopped a typhus epidemic in Naples. It promises to wipe out the mosquito and malaria, to liquidate the household fly, cockroach and bedbug, to control some of the most damaging insects that prey on the world's crops. Lieut. Colonel A. L. Ahnfeldt, of the U.S. Surgeon General's office, exclaimed last week: "DDT will be to preventive medicine ...

The Latin class you took freshman year may lack real-world usefulness, but researchers think graduates may pick up a different kind of skill in college: stress management. A study in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior suggests that highly educated adults handle daily stress better than their less educated counterparts. Researchers interviewed more than 1,000 adults over eight days and found that although college grads experienced a greater number of stressful events

At the Kiev offices of Innovative Marketing Ukraine, hundreds of programmers, translators and database engineers created a software product that made the company a world leader — an exceptional achievement in the impoverished former Soviet republic. But the way the company made its multimillion-dollar profits is nothing to celebrate, according to the criminal charges its owners now face in a district court in Chicago. Innovative Marketing, say investigators and Internet-security researchers, was one of the biggest and cleverest ...

The uprisings sweeping the Arab world haven't only toppled dictatorships. Gone, too, are the old stereotypes of Arab women as passive, voiceless victims. Over the past few months, the world has seen them marching in Tunisia, shouting slogans in Bahrain and Yemen, braving tear gas in Egypt, and blogging and strategizing in cyberspace. Egyptian activist Asmaa Mahfouz, 26, became known as "The Leader of the Revolution" after she posted an online video call to arms, telling young ...

Across the industrialized world, women still live 5 to 10 years longer than men. Among people over 100 years old, 85% are women, according to Tom Perls, founder of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University and creator of the website LivingTo100.com. Time.com asks him why. Q: Why do women live longer than men? A: One important reason is the big delay — and advantage — women have over men in terms of cardiovascular disease, like heart attack ...