An intelligence assessment that the war in Iraq increased Islamic radicalism, worsening the terror threat, set off a sharp debate today among American political officials.
What would Mark Twain make of America today? When he wrote his utopian satire, The Gilded Age (1873), there were certainly a lot of targets for his barbed shafts. The country worshipped gold, its politics were venal, and 1 percent of Americans sat on 20 percent of the nation's wealth. And they weren't shy about it, either. At a dinner in New York, by one account, guests smoked cigarettes rolled in hundred-dollar bills (about $2,000 today).
We're a nation of beautiful babies. In a remarkable achievement, the loss of babies during their first year of life has plummeted by almost 70 percent since 1970. Yet the nation's infant mortality rate is used time and again as evidence of America's failed health system. Just last week, the Commonwealth Fund issued a score card that flunked U.S. health system performance with newborns. The reason? Our current infant mortality rate of 6.4 per 1,000 live births is high compared with the 3.2 to 3.6 per 1,000 estimated for the three top-scoring countries in the world-Iceland, Finland, and Japan. It's also higher than the 6 deaths per 1,000 for the European community as a whole. Before putting on the hair shirt, let's take a look behind these numbers as these comparisons have serious flaws. They also convey little about why we lose nearly 28,000 babies a year, a starting point if we want to bring universal health to our nation's cradles.
AP - The two were quiet loners who gravitated toward each other at school. They both became teenage mothers. Years later with two children of her own, according to media reports, Hall baby-sat Tunstall's three kids.
AP - Democrats on Sunday seized on an intelligence assessment that said the Iraq war has increased the terrorist threat, saying it was further evidence that Americans should choose new leadership in the November elections.
AP - Helicopters lifted off as winds calmed Sunday, ferrying water and transporting firefighters to battle a three-week-old wildfire that has scorched more than 200 square miles of the Los Padres National Forest.
In a contentious taped interview that aired on "Fox News Sunday," former president Bill Clinton vigorously defended his efforts as president to capture and kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
French President Jacques Chirac said on Saturday he would investigate the leak of confidential French defense ministry documents containing a report that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead, and said that report has been in no way confirmed.
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