Economic crises come and go, but entitlements are forever. The Great Depression eventually dissipated, but Franklin Roosevelt's crown jewel — the Social Security system — is still with us. And so it will be with the Obama Administration. The early headlines have been all about the President's efforts to repair the financial system and jump-start the economy. If he succeeds, he probably will be re-elected. But Barack Obama's place in history will be determined by the long-term structural changes he ...

Indians were voting Thursday in the fourth phase of a marathon general election to choose a new federal government. Officials at the meeting are expected to sign a prisoner transfer agreement that would allow Samantha Orobator to serve out a sentence in Britain, if she is convicted at her forthcoming trial, according to an official Laotian source who spoke to CNN. The agreement document has been prepared, the source told CNN. A Foreign Office spokesman in London confirmed that ...

As a journalist, as a human being, the stories of the people around you stick with you. Whether it is in passing memory or in daily wonderment, they are in your mind and many in your heart, engrained forever. The first story I worked on for CNN in Afghanistan back in November, just as we were opening our new bureau in Kabul, was on a girl who attended a school for street kids called Aschiana. Aschiana, which means "nest" in ...

Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of two-time presidential hopeful John Edwards, does not know whether he fathered a child during his affair with a campaign staffer, she says in an interview that is to air this week. "I have seen a picture of the baby. I have no idea. It doesn't look like my children, but I don't have any idea," she said in an exclusive interview with Oprah Winfrey to air Thursday. Winfrey's Harpo Productions Inc. provided CNN with ...

Fear and skepticism on the streets of Mexico have led to panic buying and deep suspicions about the government. Can officials handle a deadly swine flu epidemic, many people are asking, and are authorities lying about what's really going on The nervousness and distrust are not limited to Mexico City, where government officials said most of the 159 deaths suspected of coming from the 2009 H1N1 flu strain have occurred. Villahermosa, in Tabasco state, is 567 miles ...

A Colorado man was convicted of first-degree murder and a bias-motivated crime and sentenced to life in prison for killing a transgender teen he met on an online social networking site. It was the first time in the nation that a state hate crime statute resulted in a conviction in a transgender person's murder, the advocacy group Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said. Seated in the front row of the courtroom, the family of Justin "Angie" Zapata broke ...

Mass in a tent village. Handouts of donated chocolate Easter eggs, and a holiday lunch consisting of aid food. It's not the way people in L'Aquila expected to celebrate their Easter holiday. But in the wake of a deadly earthquake that killed nearly 300 people and left some 45,000 homeless, it's a poignant reality they must live with. "It is hard for us to believe right now," the Archbishop of L'Aquila told those assembled for an emotional Easter Mass. "But ...

Fate, police say, saved baby Grace from being tossed out with the trash. Were it not for a cleaning lady who chanced upon the newborn waving a feeble arm from a blue trash bag in an airplane bathroom, Grace would have met the fate her mother apparently intended for her, authorities said. On Wednesday, police in New Zealand charged the 29-year-old woman with abandonment and assault -- for giving birth to the child on an international flight and then leaving ...

Police in Northern Ireland should either charge or release suspects held over the killings of a policeman and two soldiers, Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein said Monday. Nicholas Hughes, whose mother gassed herself in 1963 at her London home while her two children slept in the next room, hanged himself at his home in Alaska, his sister Frieda told The Times newspaper. Hughes, 47, was unmarried with no children of his own and had until recently been a marine ...

The family history of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath took another tragic turn Monday when it was revealed that their son had committed suicide after battling depression. Nicholas Hughes, whose mother gassed herself in 1963 at her London home while her two children slept in the next room, hanged himself at his home in Alaska, his sister Frieda told The Times newspaper. Hughes, 47, was unmarried with no children of his own and had until recently been a ...