Correction appended: Aug. 16, 2007 "Psycho." "Freak." "Jason from the horror movie." These are the answers that counselor Habsi Kaba gets from Miami police officers when asked to describe people with mental illness. Such stereotypes are surprisingly common, says Kaba, and not just within law enforcement. But these misconceptions are especially dangerous when they're held by police, who are often forced to make split-second, life-or-death decisions about mentally ill suspects. "The worst thing you can have is power and lack ...

Services for Sen. Edward Kennedy will be Saturday morning at a Boston church before his burial in Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, his office announced Wednesday. President Obama, who called Kennedy an "extraordinary leader," will deliver a eulogy at the funeral, according to several sources. Kennedy died Tuesday night at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, after being ill for 15 months with brain cancer. He was 77. Obama, on vacation at Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, said Wednesday that Americans knew ...

Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, the patriarch of the first family of Democratic politics, died Wednesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, after a lengthy battle with brain cancer. He was 77. "We've lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever," a family statement said. "We thank everyone who gave him care and support over this last year, and ...

Last week's elections in Afghanistan have been marred "by widespread fraud and intimidation" which could cast doubt on the legitimacy of the vote, six presidential candidates declared Tuesday. The candidates issued a joint statement as Afghanistan's elections commission prepares to release preliminary voting results from the nation's contested presidential race later in the day. A cabinet minister in the government of incumbent Afghan president Hamid Karzai claimed Tuesday that preliminary results showed Karzai won the election with 68 percent of ...

Americans shouldn't expect to see the 62,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan come home any time soon, no matter who is declared the victor in the country's presidential election. In fact, the Pentagon is planning to add 6,000 troops by the end of the year. Ballot counting continued Friday, a day after Afghans went to the polls in the nation's second presidential election since the 2001 fall of the Taliban, the strict Islamic theocracy that emerged from the country's civil war ...

The release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi from prison in due to terminal illness was greeted with wideapread derision from newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, with few having good words for Scottish authorities behind the decisions. Below are a selection of the opinions that have appeared in newspapers in Britain, which witnessed the 1988 atrocity, and America, where many of the families of victims live. In London, The Times ...

Correction Appended: Aug. 20, 2009 Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring ...

If Washington wants health care reform with bipartisan support, experts say consider what former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney did as governor in Democratic Massachusetts. "You don't have to have a public option," Romney said. "You don't have to have the government getting into the insurance business to make it work." Three years after enacting its own version of reform, Massachusetts now has near-universal coverage. Taxpayer watchdogs say it's affordable. "There is this widespread assumption, that is treated as fact, ...

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and ...

In the late 1960s Bob Dylan sang about "cruisin'down the highway in a Greyhound bus." Now, the 95-year-old iconic American brand is taking to the British roads. FirstGroup, Britain's largest bus and train operator, and owner of the Greyhound coach brand in the U.S., said the buses would start running from London, Victoria, to Portsmouth and Southampton on September 14. Tickets will cost as little as a £1, with the average journey costing £7. It plans to roll out ...