Interview with President Obama on Health Care

TIME: I thought I’d talk to you a little bit about the whole degree to which this is really a test of leadership. The fact is that no President has been able to pull off anything on this order of magnitude in 44 years [since Congress passed Medicare and Medicaid].President Obama: Well, as you point out, the last time we did something of this magnitude was 1965. And the circumstances in some cases were similar — in some cases were profoundly different.

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Florida Looks at New Ideas for Battling Hurricanes

Hurricane season is two months old and not a single named storm has popped onto the radar. If that makes people complacent, it only makes weather watchers worry even more about what is to come. Officials and insurers are concerned about the ramifications of a “Big One,” and Florida, the most ravaged of states, is looking at several novel approaches to riding out the storms — or even preventing them altogether

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Global terror warning as Somali militants flex muscles

An Al Qaeda-linked militant group waging war against Somalia’s fragile government is becoming an increasing threat to Western ally Kenya and could potentially destabilize the region with dire consequences for global security, officials and analysts warn. Al-Shabaab, one of the strongest Islamic militias battling for control of Mogadishu, has gained ground in recent weeks, according to officials, and has started to flex its muscles beyond Somalia’s border with terror strikes, kidnappings and recruitment drives.

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American’s odyssey to al Qaeda’s heart

On September 10, 2007, almost exactly six years after al Qaeda attacked the United States, Bryant Neal Vinas, a 24-year-old American citizen born in Queens, New York, boarded a flight from the city en route to Lahore, in eastern Pakistan, determined to fight jihad in neighboring Afghanistan. Brought up a Catholic by his Latin American immigrant parents, who divorced when he was young, Vinas tried to join the U.S. army in 2002 but dropped out after just a few weeks

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Church offers marriage and baptism in one

The Church of England is offering unmarried parents who want to tie the knot the option of having baptisms for their children at the same time. The offer is a response to demand after church-sponsored research showed that 20 percent of couples getting married in a church already had children, whether together or from a previous relationship, the church said

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