Government Officials

The first time Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner was sent out as point man to sell the Obama administration's financial rescue plan, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 382 points. And Geithner's subsequent efforts as a center-stage spokesman were less than resounding successes. On Monday, the administration took a different approach.

The would-be killers mounted a daring plan: renting a property adjacent to Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos' suburban farm and secreting police uniforms, weapons and motorcycles at the site to facilitate a Holy Week assassination. Once again, Colombia's largest rebel group, known as the FARC, was trying to kill Santos. In revealing the foiled plot this week and announcing the arrests of 11 alleged rebel conspirators, Colombian National Police commander Gen.

After years as a top state and federal healthcare official, Nancy-Ann DeParle turned her attention to the business of medicine, serving as a board member for more than a dozen companies and managing a private equity portfolio over the last eight years. In 2006 and 2007 alone, DeParle collected at least $3.5 million in fees and the sale or awards of stock from healthcare firms, according to regulatory filings.

Medics working for Cambodia's former Khmer Rouge rulers at a notorious death camp slowly killed prisoners by draining their blood to be used for infusions for privileged cadres, according to allegations presented Monday at a hearing for one of the regime's leaders. Kang Kek Ieu ran the S-21 prison, also known as Tuol Sleng, where more than 12,000 men, women and children were tortured before being executed in the nearby "killing fields" outside the capital, Phnom Penh.

Former President Alberto Fujimori of Peru made an impassioned plea of innocence at his human rights crimes trial in the Peruvian capital, portraying himself Friday as the leader who rescued his country from anarchy, not the man prosecutors have cast as a "Frankenstein" monster. "Rather than prove my guilt, the prosecution has merely shown the inconsistency of its accusations," Fujimori said, alleging that prosecutors fabricated evidence in their effort to make an "iceberg from a piece of ice."

In the annals of capital partisanship, their names are boldfaced: the candidates for America's highest civil rights post who never got confirmed. During the last Democratic administration, conservatives succeeded in blocking Senate approval of Lani Guinier and Bill Lann Lee to head the civil rights division at the Justice Department. Now they're gearing up to put Thomas Perez, a Maryland lawyer and President Obama's nominee for the job, through the grinder.

He is an enigma from the world's most secretive state, a behind-the-scenes political operative known mostly as a trusted brother-in-law to North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il. But Jang Song Taek has recently emerged as a decisive player in the drama of who might succeed the ailing 67-year-old Kim in a country that remains defiant in the face of international pressure to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.

President Obama called his full Cabinet together for the first time Monday and instructed the department heads to cut enough money from their budgets to set a new tone in Washington. But the target the president set for the cuts amounts to a fraction of the overall budget, leaving room for critics to question whether the reductions mean much at all. Obama has asked for $100 million in trims from a budget expected to exceed $3.5 trillion.

Ex-President Roh Moo-hyun will enter familiar territory for a former South Korean head of state this week when he is grilled by prosecutors over his alleged role in a national bribery scandal. The onetime human rights lawyer and judge is the third South Korean president since 1995 to face a corruption probe after leaving office. He is suspected of soliciting $6 million in bribes from a shoemaking magnate that were allegedly paid to his wife and son.

Faced with the international outbreak of swine flu and mounting concern about the threat to Americans, the Obama administration is relying on a member of the president's Cabinet with almost no background in medicine: Janet Napolitano, the secretary of Homeland Security. Over the last two days, Napolitano has been a constant presence on television and in news reports, urging calm and offering reassurance while laying out the facts and the government's response to the outbreak.