Senior Catholic bishops are threatening to oppose the health care bill under consideration in Congress if lawmakers don't make significant reforms regarding federally funded abortions and other issues. "No one should be required to pay for or participate in abortion," the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a letter Thursday to members of Congress. The letter follows a recent Senate Finance Committee vote that defeated Republican amendments that Democrats said would broaden current restrictions of federal funding for ...

Former Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa, who resigned from his post after appearing intoxicated at a news conference earlier this year, was found dead in his home Sunday, police told CNN. Tokyo police found Nakagawa, 56, lying face down on a bed on the second-floor of his home, Kyodo reported. Nakagawa submitted his resignation February 17, just three days after he appeared intoxicated at the G7 news conference in Rome, Italy. Japan's prime minister quickly appointed Kaoru Yosano, the economics ...

Google Wave, a product that promises to revolutionize online communication, will go out to about 100,000 beta testers Wednesday. The Web application from Google Inc. combines elements of e-mail, chat, Wiki documents, blogs and photo-sharing sites to create a form of Internet communication called a "hosted conversation," or a "wave." Google demonstrated Wave at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, California, in May. The closed group of beta testers will help Google fish bugs ...

Jaycee Dugard will testify against the couple that allegedly held her captive in an elaborate compound hidden in their backyard for 18 years if there is a trial, a lawyer for her family said at a news conference Thursday. Attorney Scott McGregor admitted it has been a difficult transition for Dugard and her two children -- who police say were fathered by her captor -- given her captivity spanned more than half her life and was the only world she ...

A new drug for melanoma has been shown to rapidly shrink malignant tumors in an early trial at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York. Among 27 patients whom the experimental new drug was tested on, "19 showed a 30 percent or greater reduction in tumor size," Dr. Paul Chapman, the lead researcher told CNN from a cancer conference in Berlin. Melanoma develops in cells that produce melanin, the pigment that gives skin its color, and is the most serious ...

Pittsburgh conjures up visions of steel mills and gritty sports teams for many. The host city of this week's Group of 20 summit hopes to update that image. The city, once known for shuttered steel mills and thousands of lost jobs, is now held up as a shining example for ways to weather a recession. That's why the G-20 chose Pittsburgh for its summit, at which representatives of the world's largest economies will meet from Thursday and Friday. "Pittsburgh stands ...

A day before the United Nations held a climate change summit, New York City was blanketed with 100,000 fake copies of the New York Post tabloid, filled with content related to climate change. But the Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., wasn't impressed, calling the effort by perennial pranksters the Yes Men a "Witless Spoof in Flawless Format" in a statement released Tuesday, a day after the faux Post hit the streets. The overall endeavor, the Post said, was ...

Four young men falsely accused of raping an 18-year-old student at Hofstra University were trying to return their lives to normal Friday after an ordeal that two of them described as traumatic. "I was really scared. I couldn't believe what was basically going through my mind. It was like a big nightmare, and I thought I was going to do time for something I didn't do," 20-year-old Kevin Taveras told HLN's "Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell." "It was devastating," he said. ...

The hopes for renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks dimmed Friday despite the fast-paced shuttle diplomacy efforts of top U.S. diplomat George Mitchell. Mitchell, the U.S. envoy for the Middle East, capped off a week of diplomacy in the region with a second round of talks with both sides. He met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Mitchell was not successful in his effort to get a trilateral meeting ...

New Haven Police Chief James Lewis on Thursday described the killing of Yale graduate student Annie Le as an instance of "workplace violence," but he did not elaborate. Raymond J. Clark III, 24, has been charged with Le's murder and bond has been set at $3 million, Lewis told reporters at a news conference. Thursday morning, police arrested the Yale lab technician in the strangulation of Le, whose body was found in the wall of an off-campus research building. ...