Russell Watson

Austin Maxwell, 13, and his mother, Janet, 45, of Modesto, Calif., rarely go to doctors anymore. "I don't need them," she says. Maxwell prefers the Internet. "I use that instead of the doctor because [Web sites] have the most up-to-date information," she says.

The first of my ancestors who came to North America, in the 17th century, were Dutch. They settled in a colony called New Amsterdam. Then the English took over.

People in other countries thought they knew what to expect from George W. Bush. He was, after all, his father's son. Although the new president lacked his parent's long experience in world affairs, he was buffered by advisers from the previous Bush administration.

The death penalty is an issue that provokes surprisingly little public debate in the United States, except when a celebrated murderer--or someone who may have been convicted wrongly--is up for execution.

It was supposed to be a down-home summit--two straight-talking ranchers in a neighborly visit across the Tex-Mex border. But when George W. Bush got to Mexico last week on his first foreign trip as president, a ghost popped up at the barbecue: his father's old nemesis, Saddam Hussein.

As night falls over the working-class district of Yau Ma Tei in Hong Kong, two dozen members of the Falun Gong movement sit closely together in a small tenement, chanting from their handbooks.

The students said they wanted democratic reform. But when they gathered by the thousands in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989, some of China's most senior leaders suspected a far more serious offense: subversion.

He was perfectly cast as the power behind the throne. Vladimiro Montesinos could look sinister and bland at the same time, with his dark double-breasted suits and his low public profile.

He was perfectly cast as the power behind the throne. Vladimiro Montesinos could look sinister and bland at the same time, with his dark double-breasted suits and his low public profile.

People who know him well say Vojislav Kostunica is shy and lazy, with little charisma and few communication skills. He is a political loner; critics used to call his organization a "van party," claiming that all of its members could fit into a single vehicle.

People who know him well say Vojislav Kostunica is shy and lazy, with little charisma and few communication skills. He is a political loner; critics used to call his organization a "van party," claiming all of its members could fit into a single vehicle.

Emma Yevdokimova's anger was as great as her grief. Her 20-year-old son, Oleg, was among the 118 crewmen declared dead last week when a team of Norwegian and British divers finally pried open a hatch on the sunken submarine Kursk and found it flooded.

Would a child be better off growing up in Miami or Havana? Elian Gonzalez is only 6 years old, and he doesn't seem to have a firm opinion. Talking by phone to his father back in Cuba, he said he wanted to go home to "Poppy," according to relatives there.

From the front, on the elegant Boulevard Ostende, the Belle Epoque Building looks like a six-story fortress--an impregnable haven for the rich and reclusive.

When he lost both of his top front teeth in a skiing accident nine years ago, Jason Wolff thought he was covered. And indeed, his dental plan paid an oral surgeon to reimplant the teeth.

When a uranium- processing plant north of Tokyo leaked a burst of radiation last week, housewife Terumi Terunuma called town hall to find out what to do. Tokaimura is a company town for Japan's nuclear industry, home to 15 separate facilities.

Momir Talic thought he was safe. The 57-year-old Bosnian Serb general had a live-and-let-live relationship with the NATO forces policing his homeland; he cooperated with them, and they never asked what he did during Bosnia's war.

The U.S. Army insists Col. James Hiett had no idea he might have been sleeping with the enemy. Since last summer, Hiett had been in command of the 200 American military personnel waging a difficult campaign against drug trafficking in Colombia.

People have been calling him a war criminal for years. That didn't stop Slobodan Milosevic from doing his dirty work; nor did it stop many of the world's great powers from negotiating with him when it served their purposes.

Gen. Wesley Clark's job is defeating Slobodan Milosevic however he can. When the American commander of NATO forces asked for Apache helicopters, he got 24 of them.

Steven Gonzales wrote to his mother back home in Huntsville, Texas, that he and his fellow soldiers had been left "in limbo." They were sent to Macedonia as part of a small United Nations peacekeeping force, a trip wire against an attack from neighboring Serbia.

Jim Van Houten, a financial planner from Phoenix, Arizona, was on a tour of the Middle East, but by the time his group arrived in Egypt, most of its members had opted out. "We started in Israel with 320 people," he said during a visit to the Valley of the Kings, the stunning burial site outside Luxor. "Only 62 people came to Cairo, and only 16 of us came down to Luxor.

LIKE MANY 15-YEAR-OLDS, NIJLA Coskun decorated her London bedroom with images of the heroes in her life. The Teletubbies shared space with photographs of Abdullah Ocalan and his Kurdish fighters.

JIM VAN HOUTEN, A FINANCIAL planner from Phoenix, Ariz., was on a tour of the Middle East, but by the time his group arrived in Egypt, most of its members had opted out. ""We started in Israel with 320 people,'' he said during a visit to the Valley of the Kings, the stunning burial site outside Luxor. ""Only 62 people came to Cairo, and only 16 of us came down to Luxor.

AS HE LAY ON HIS DEATHBED, KING HUSSEIN WAS STILL 12 YEARS YOUNGER THAN Saudi Arabia's King Fahd. He was five years younger than Syrian President Hafez Assad, six years younger than Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and Morocco's King Hassan and seven years younger than Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

FOR MORE THAN 40 YEARS, Jordan's King Hussein gave his chronically imperiled country the blessing of stability. Fending off coups, assassination attempts and the predatory machinations of his neighbors, the king turned a resource-poor colonial creation into one of the most solid countries in the Middle East.

TO MOST CHINESE, THE POLITICAL atmosphere still feels more like springtime than winter, with daring new ideas coming into bud. At a library in Guangzhou, an exhibition of nude photographs draws thousands of viewers, and the authorities make no effort to close it down.

IN THE NO-FLY ZONES OF northern and southern Iraq, Saddam Hussein's gunners blindly fired surface-to-air missiles at patrolling American and British warplanes.

TO MOST CHINESE, THE POLITICAL atmosphere still feels more like springtime than winter, with daring new ideas coming into bud. At a library in Guangzhou, an exhibition of nude photographs draws thousands of viewers, and the authorities make no effort to close it down.

THERE HE GOES AGAIN. EVERY YEAR AT ABOUT THIS time, Saddam Hussein picks a fight with the United States. Last fall the Iraqi president crushed the hapless Kurds, whose U.S. umbrella turned out to offer them very little protection.