Eve Conant

As the world came to grips with the devastation caused by last week's tsunami, tens of millions in relief aid was pledged. But initially the money put up by rich countries appeared to some small, and slow to come.

Even as the tsunami death toll rises, worries are growing about the spread of disease. Its easy to send help with a few clicks of the mouse. Here are some of the organizations rushing aid to survivors:UNICEF: U.N.

The Christmas tsunami killed tens of thousands of people in twelve countries in the space of only a few minutes. Now, aid groups are harnessing the Internet to raise millions of dollars at an unprecedented pace of their own.Tens of millions of dollars has been raised online in just three days, aid groups say. "We're stunned by the level of compassion and response.

McClenny, 21,made headlines in October when she and 22 other members of 343rd Quartermaster Company stationed in Iraq refused to carry out a mission with unarmored vehicles.

Saif Kaddafi insists he's not in line to run Libya. But no one is better positioned than the second son of Muammar Kaddafi. The London School of Economics student is fluent in English, speaks French and German, and is leading Libya's effort to charm the West.

When 12 Maryland dream homes burned to the ground and dozens more smoldered in an eight-hour blaze, the first thought on most people's minds was ecoterrorism.

Major-General Ray Odierno was commander of the 4th Infantry Division, whose soldiers captured Saddam Hussein in a "spider hole" just outside of Tikrit a year ago.

Powell's loss is Rice's gain. The challenges she inherits--and how she'll handle them.

Your mother (we hope) told you to eat your vegetables, but someday soon security moms may be nagging their little ones to eat their petunias. That's the hope, at least, of Philadelphia-based INB Biotechnologies, which has been experimenting with petunias to develop a nontoxic anthrax vaccine.

Israel: Yea or Nay on Gaza?Why does Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fear a referendum on his controversial Gaza plan? With his move to evacuate thousands of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip next year sparking talk of a civil war in Israel, some of Sharon's deputies are pushing for a nationwide vote that would give the withdrawal more legitimacy than the parliamentary vote scheduled for Oct. 26, which Sharon is expected to win.

In 2004, foreign policy--not domestic economic issues--have been front and center in the presidential campaign, more so than at anytime since the Vietnam war.

With oil prices hitting a record $50 a barrel last week--and with continued violence in Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq--Libya is being hailed as an El Dorado for war-weary U.S. oil majors. "Libya is booming," says ChevronTexaco's Julian Singer in North Africa. "It's one of the safest countries in the region right now." President George W.

It was my seventh year of living in Moscow, the summer of 2002, and I was walking through a busy downtown street after having returned from a recent visit with some reporter friends in Jerusalem.

Questions surround the final weeks of Nicholas Berg, the 26-year-old American beheaded in Iraq last May. Now his father, Michael Berg, is banging on doors in D.C. to research the circumstances of his son's detention in an Iraqi jail prior to his abduction.

Secretary of State Colin Powell recently testified before a federal grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of CIA covert officer Valerie Plame, NEWSWEEK has learned.

They call it the "Berlin Wall." It's a plain, six-foot-high concrete barrier that bisects an unnamed village outside the Iranian city of Bushehr. On one side, about 1,500 Iranians live under Sharia--they lead quiet, spartan lives of work and prayer at the local mosque, with men and women strictly segregated.

Ten thousand years ago, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake in the middle of a vast, low-lying basin. Its fertile valleys and lush pastures would have given Neolithic hunter-gatherers a perfect opportunity to make the leap to a more settled, agricultural society.

The village of Nikolskoye isn't easy to find. Its nearest neighbors will tell you to turn right at the forest edge, follow the trees that ring a large field and hope for the best.

Nikolai Dulepov claims self-defense. "He was strangling me," whispers the 23-year-old, on trial for double murder. That's why he stabbed his friend Yevgenny four times in the back one drunken night last summer, he says.

He needs no further introduction in Moscow, but Europe's richest man under 40 still likes to advertise. Green-hued billboards marking the 10-year anniversary of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's oil giant, Yukos, crop up every few hundred meters on Moscow's busiest roads.

After more than two years of self-imposed exile in London, Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky was finally arrested by British police last week. Berezovsky faces extradition to Russia on charges that between 1994 and 1995 he and a colleague defrauded a Russian regional administration of 60 billion rubles, roughly $15 million dollars at the time.Berezovsky was an influential member of the then Russian President Boris Yeltsin's inner circle, and one of the country's most powerful and...

Thinking about cheating on your taxes? If you're a Russian citizen, you may get a house visit from the tax police. The new "Instruction No. 525" allows police to contact colleagues and family members of any individual they believe may be planning to commit a crime, and ask them to talk their loved ones out of it.

The boys asleep in their bunks could be any young teens at summer camp. But this is no vacation spot. At precisely 6:00 a.m., a Russian army officer storms in and barks out a wake-up call.

A decade ago, after the Soviet collapse, Russia rushed to liberate itself from the namesakes of fallen idols. Leningrad became St. Petersburg, Gorky became Nizhny Novgorod.

Inside the crumbling rooms of Moscow's Central House of Chess, dozens of top players and fans watch in rapt attention as a match unfolds at lightning speed.

Yuri Fedosov is in terrible pain. Doctors have removed the splinter from his iris, but the swelling hasn't subsided. Inside Moscow's Central Ophthalmology Hospital, nurse Lydia Karikh has the cure.

Ask Alexander Shabalov for details about the pre-dawn raid to save hundreds of hostages in a besieged Moscow theater on Oct. 26, and his swarthy face becomes set in anger, he smokes a few more cigarettes and his hands begin to shake. "Almost every single hostage was still alive when we came into the theater," says Shabalov, head of Moscow's quasi-governmental Rescue Services.

What do you design for people who are obsessed with everything new? Denis Simachev says the answer is simple: give them something familiar. The appeal of Soviet kitsch first caught on in Moscow a few years ago; billboards used Soviet propaganda posters to advertise rock-music stations, and Soviet-themed restaurants began popping up.

Inside Victoria Andreyanova's Moscow boutique, the decor as well as the best-selling clothes are spartan and understated. Amid soft lighting, a Sinead O'Connor disc spins on a chrome CD player.

The staff of the weekly Versiya had a scoop. They'd spent 10 days frantically reporting one of the biggest stories any of them could remember--the siege of the Moscow theater that ended in a dramatic assault by Russian Special Forces and the use of a knockout gas that killed more than 100 civilians.