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Failing to reform health care ‘truly scary,’ Obama says

President Obama complained Tuesday about opposition scare tactics against a proposed health care overhaul but said that failing to fix problems in the current system would be the scariest outcome of all. Obama addressed a supportive town hall meeting that contrasted with combative events held by Democratic Congress members, which have generated heated and sometimes disruptive responses. Also Tuesday, hostile crowds shouted questions and made angry statements against proposed health-care legislation at meetings in Pennsylvania and Missouri led by Democratic senators Arlen Specter and Claire McCaskill.

Aid workers found shot dead in Chechnya

The head of a humanitarian agency in Chechnya and her husband were found dead early Tuesday, their bodies stuffed in the trunk of their car, a prosecutor’s spokeswoman said. “These two soldiers nabbed her, put a bag over her head and pulled her into the bushes. She explains it as, ‘They got me,’ ” says Sherrlyn Borkgren, who spent a month in the Democratic Republic of the Congo late last year.

Clinton to visit heart of Africa’s longest conflict

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travels to the epicenter of Africa’s longest war Tuesday to try to help victims, especially those of sexual violence, of a regional conflict that’s dragged on more than a decade

Health care protests ‘clearly being orchestrated,’ senator says

The Senate’s second-ranking Democrat slammed recent town-hall protests over health care on Sunday, insisting they violate "the democratic process," while the Senate’s top Republican accused Democrats of "attacking citizens" with such complaints. Speaking to CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, said: “We have these screaming groups on either side.

Analysis: Bill Clinton as a diplomatic fix-it man

It was a heartwarming sight: Laura Ling and Euna Lee landing on U.S. soil and being reunited with their families.

A Brief History of Presidential Birthdays

Add to the well worn Obama-Lincoln comparisons one more similarity: an apparent aversion to big birthday parties. The 16th President never celebrated his birthday in the White House, according to Lincoln biographer Emanuel Hertz. Obama, likewise, is ringing in his 48th on Aug

In Moldova, Europe’s Last Soviet-Style Communist Government Bows Out Probably

Ninety-two years after the Russian Revolution and 20 years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe’s last Soviet-style government is finally on its way out. In Moldova this week, four months after popular upheaval, the Communist Party accepted defeat in a national election. Four pro-Western opposition parties must now scrabble together a coalition which they say will distance the country from Moscow, more fully embrace democracy and integrate with Europe

The Cheney Branch of Government

On the same day that the CIA announced it will soon release hundreds of pages of once-classified documents that detail some of the agency’s most closely guarded — and controversial — secrets of old, it was revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney has been resisting even his own Executive Branch’s efforts to find out what kind of secret material his office has been stashing away over the last four years.

U.N. worker killed in Pakistan kidnap bid

Gunmen killed a guard and a U.N. worker during a kidnapping attempt in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, officials said. Tharcisse Renzaho was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes

Former Rwandan governor convicted of genocide

A United Nations court convicted a former governor of Rwanda to life in prison for his role in a 1994 genocide that left about 800,000 dead in the central African country. Tharcisse Renzaho was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The verdict, delivered Tuesday, is the third judgment on charges of genocide delivered this year by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)