An independent investigator has determined that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin(R) may have violated state ethics laws by soliciting and acceptingprivate donations to pay $500,000 in legal debts.A confidential report, obtained by the Washington Post on Tuesday,says Palin may have violated

Student loan giant Sallie Mae reported a second-quarter loss of $123million Tuesday as it continued to feel the effects of a severerecession.The loss of 32 cents a share was in contrast to a profit of 50 centsa share, or $266

A 20-year-old U.S. Airman was in critical condition at the University of California Davis Medical Center on Monday, after losing both legs in what his family described as complications of routine gallbladder surgery.Neither the medical center nor Travis Air Force

The United Nations is warning of a $4.8 billion (£2.9 billion) shortfall in funding to tacklehumanitarian crises in the world's poorest countries, as the creditcrunch leaves developed world governments with little cash to spare.Deliveringits half-yearly update about emergency fund-raising, John

The industry that helped scuttle health reform 15 years ago with its "Harry and Louise" ads is back, voicing its support for a central element of the Obama administration's plans: making sure everyone is covered.That doesn't mean the industry is

The U.S. Senate voted Tuesday to kill the nation's premier fighter jetprogram, embracing by a 58-40 margin the argument of President Obamaand his top military advisers that more F-22s are not needed for thenation's defense and a costly drag on

Frank McCourt, a former New York City schoolteacher who turned hismiserable childhood in Limerick, Ireland, into a phenomenally popular,Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, â Angelaâ ™s Ashes,â died in Manhattan onSunday. He was 78 and lived in Manhattan and Roxbury, Connecticut.The cause

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, arriving here in Bangkok,Thailand, for a meeting of Southeast Asian nations, expressed concernonTuesday about what she called growing evidence of military cooperationbetween North Korea and Myanmar,which she said could destabilize the region. Declaring that

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke launched a broad defenseTuesday of the central bank's actions to support the economy over thelast year, responding to increasing hostility in Congress toward theFed.On the first day of his semiannual testimony to Congress on

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UnitedNations body of scientists drawn from around the world, will use itsnext assessment due in 2014 to look at how the impact of global warmingis falling unequally on the poorest developing countries.Twohundred

An Algerian man spent seven and a half years atthe Guantanamo prison camp. He claims that abuse of detainees at theprison continues, despite President Obama's order forbidding any formsof torture.Lakhdar Boumediene's own children didn't recognize him when hestepped off the

The human rights group Amnesty International accused Saudi Arabia on Wednesday of using its campaign against terrorism as a facade for â asustained assault on human rightsâ and said the rest of the world hadfailed to hold the authorities to

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday thatPresident Obama agreed to give her "an enormous amount of authority ...really everything I asked for" before she agreed to take the job ofchief U.S. diplomat.Clinton made the remarks during an

The train control system designed to prevent Metro system crashes in the Washington, D.C., area ismalfunctioning across the railroad, suggesting that a technologicalfailure at the heart of last month's fatal crash might be widespread,according to officials and documents.At least a

A federal district judge ruled Monday that the CIA repeatedly misledhim in asserting that state secrets were involved in a 15-year-oldlawsuit involving allegedly illegal wiretapping. U.S.District Judge Royce Lamberth also ordered former CIA director GeorgeTenet and five other CIA officials

The world has been gripped with fears of swineflu in recent weeks. In an interview with German news magazine Spiegel, epidemiologist TomJefferson speaks about dangerous fear-mongering, misguided,money-driven research and why we should all be washing our hands a lotmore often.SPIEGEL:

As Bank of America faces intensifying congressional oversight duringthe nation's worst economy since the Great Depression, the company hasspent more than $1.5 million lobbying on Capitol Hill. Bank of America. the recipient of $45 billion in taxpayer bailout moneyfrom the

A new study has found that Europe's fish aresmaller than they have been in decades and the researchers believeglobal warming may be to blame. They warn that smaller fish couldeventually have a domino effect on the food chain.European fish are

President Obama's dream of dramatically remaking the nation'shealth-care system is still a long way from reality. But if lawmakerscan reach an accord, one thing is virtually certain: For the first timeever, every American would be required to carry health insurance.The

The U.S. Embassy in Iraq, the government's largest overseas mission,is significantly overstaffed and needs to be downsized to reflect thereduced American role in the country, according to a new StateDepartment report. "There is a clear consensus from thetop to the