G-8 leaders focus on global warming

Leaders of the world’s leading industrialized nations are huddling with representatives of up-and-coming powerhouses to tackle global warming at an economic summit Thursday in Italy. U.S. President Barack Obama will lead the Major Economies Forum at the Group of Eight meetings in L’Aquila.

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Massachusetts sues federal government over marriage law

Massachusetts sued the U.S. government on Wednesday, challenging the constitutionality of a federal law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. “We’re taking this action today because, first, we believe that [the Defense of Marriage Act] directly interferes with Massachusetts’ long-standing sovereign authority to define and regulate the marital status of its residents,” Attorney General Martha Coakley said Wednesday afternoon

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GOP says White House sends mixed messages on stimulus

Republicans disappointed with the president’s stimulus plan are expected to hit the Obama administration and Democrats hard Wednesday during a House hearing on oversight of the stimulus spending. Republican lawmakers will accuse the administration of misreading the effectiveness of the stimulus and say the administration has “rigged the game” by using what they call the immeasurable metric of “jobs created or saved,” according to a Republican memo obtained by CNN

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Obama Moscow Speech: President Gets Personal on Democracy in Russia

For more than a week now, White House officials have promised that Barack Obama would directly address the issues of democracy, human rights and freedom of speech in Russia, where all three values are often in scant supply. What they did not predict was that he would tie those causes so closely to his own life story.

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Gays in the Military: Does a Sailor’s Murder Signal Deeper Problems?

Even as Pentagon lawyers begin trying to ease the “don’t ask, don’t tell” prohibition on gays serving openly in the U.S. military, the murder last week of an apparently gay sailor at California’s Camp Pendleton has raised new questions over the readiness of the armed forces to accept openly homosexual personnel. Seaman August Provost of Houston was shot and killed while standing nighttime guard at his base on June 30.

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Dmitri Medvedev and Barack Obama Discuss U.S.-Russia Relations in Moscow

Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev, Presidents of the former Cold War rival empires, greeted each other like old friends on Monday, with a cheery chat about the clouds. “Even the weather favors such an intercourse between us,” the Russian leader said in a Kremlin sitting room, striking an optimistic tone on a drizzly day.

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