Police in Cleveland, Ohio, were searching Thursday for a man they suspect fatally shot his new wife and four children, and shot and injured another child. "U.S. officials listened to the concerns of the NGOs, particularly regarding humanitarian needs that will go unmet in the wake of the expulsion of aid groups," acting State Department Spokesman Gordon Dugiid told reporters. The move by the Sudanese government to throw out all aid groups comes a day after the ...

An 8-year-old American boy is caught in the middle of an ugly custody battle so high profile that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is using her clout to try to bring the boy home. In 2004, David Goldman dropped off his wife, Bruna, and then-4-year-old son, Sean, at the airport for a two-week vacation in Brazil. Shortly after she arrived in her native country, Bruna told David she wanted a divorce and planned to stay in Brazil with their ...

Early parenting choices are never clear-cut, and deciding whether to allow your infant to watch television or DVDs ranks as one of the more perplexing. Thanks to marketing claims for TV shows and DVDs created for babies, many parents believe that watching educational programming will stimulate infants' brains and actually promote learning. It's a seductive line of reasoning. Certainly, exposing a baby to brain-engaging DVDs will put him on an early path to becoming, well, a baby Einstein, right Maybe ...

For most, the flu is a winter inconvenience -- stuffy nose, fever, body aches and a few days of bed rest. But what seems fairly routine also can become life-threatening. The majority of flu deaths strike the elderly and people with pre-existing health problems. But flu also affects kids with no known medical problems and can send them into critical condition, or even death. This flu season started slowly, and doctors anticipate the peak will occur this ...

A U.S. missile strike on a house near Sararoha in northwest Pakistan on Sunday killed nine people and wounded three, Pakistani intelligence officials said. Oscar-nominated "American Beauty" star Annette Bening was among the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to hear the remarks, Iran's state-run ISNA news agency said. "Representatives of Iran's film industry should only have an official meeting with representatives of the Academy and Hollywood if they apologize for the insults and accusations against ...

Hollywood should apologize to Iran for "insults and accusations against the Iranian nation," a top aide to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a visiting Hollywood delegation Sunday. Oscar-nominated "American Beauty" star Annette Bening was among the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to hear the remarks, Iran's state-run ISNA news agency said. "Representatives of Iran's film industry should only have an official meeting with representatives of the Academy and Hollywood if they apologize for the insults ...

A children's show host who was born with one hand is facing criticism from parents over her disability. BBC spokeswoman Katya Mira said the corporation has received at least 25 "official" complaints recently about Cerrie Burnell, new host of two shows on the BBC-run CBeebies television network, which is aimed at children younger than six. The official complaints do not count the dozens of negative comments lodged in Internet chat rooms, Mira said. In one chat room, a father lamented ...

Elie Wiesel, the Nazi concentration camp survivor who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, showed little inclination this week to make peace with accused swindler Bernie Madoff, whom he called "one of the greatest scoundrels, thieves, liars, criminals." "Could I forgive him No," the 80-year-old told a panel assembled Thursday by Conde Nast's Portfolio Magazine at New York's 21 Club to discuss Madoff, whose alleged victims included Wiesel and his foundation, The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. "To ...

Dangerous. Misguided. Untenable. Those were just some of the criticisms leveled at amateur psychologist Judith Rich Harris and the conclusions in her controversial book The Nurture Assumption when it was first published a decade ago. In it, Harris argues it's not what parents do or say that determines who their children become — what really matters is the influence of peers. Ten years on, however, with parents seeming to worry more than ever about what it takes to raising a smart, decent kid, Harris's message ...

It sounds too good to be true. Now, for a limited time — the year of St. Paul, to be specific, which ends in June — say a prayer, pop by a designated church and qualify for an indulgence that deducts time from your scorching sojourn in the cleansing fires of purgatory. Indulgences have been part of Catholic doctrine since the Crusades. When the Church offered them for sale in the 1500’s — call it mercy for money — ...