For the first time in more than 60 years, America is without a Kennedy on the national stage and it's more than just a sentimental loss to President Barack Obama. The last of the Kennedy brothers, Senator Edward Kennedy, died this week of brain cancer at age 77. "We shouldn't underplay the adverse effect this has on the president's healthcare fight," said Democratic strategist James Carville. Kennedy was the youngest of four brothers, the only one who died peacefully. John ...

"The greatest expectations were placed upon Ted Kennedy's shoulders because of who he was," observed President Barack Obama in his eulogy, "but he surpassed them all because of who he became." Thus did a sitting President honor the man who never became one, acknowledging that power is wielded in many ways. It was fitting that, in a church famous for its healing miracles, the funeral service was a celebration of private love, for the scarred and broken ...

It has not been lost on many that Ted Kennedy's death came at a moment when the cause he described as the greatest one of his public life — universal health care — seems to be stumbling just short of the goal line. Kennedy's absence has been felt all year on Capitol Hill, and there are many on both sides who believe that health reform might be closer to becoming a reality if he had been in any shape ...

The most controversial "marriage that never was" in recent U.S. political history is back. Sources tell TIME that the Vatican has reversed the annulment of Joseph P. Kennedy II's marriage to Sheila Rauch. The annulment had been granted in secrecy by the Catholic Church after the couple's 1991 no-fault civil divorce. Rauch found out about the de-sanctification of their marriage only in 1996, after Kennedy had been wedded to his former Congressional aide, Beth Kelly, for three years. The ...

For almost 50 years, Sen. Ted Kennedy pushed unsuccessfully for legislation that would reform the health care system and ensure coverage for every American. Ironically, his death might bring about a change of tactics that would help reach the goal he was unable to achieve in life, one veteran political analyst says. "Kennedy's departure may in fact increase the chances that we get a more sweeping health care bill," American Enterprise Institute analyst Norman Ornstein recently told CNN. As Congress ...

More than 200 people charged in connection with last month's deadly riots in the western Chinese city of Urumqi could be tried this week, according to reports from the state-run China Daily. The report, posted on the newspaper's Web site, said "more than 200 suspects had been formally arrested to face prosecution" for various charges in relation to the July 5 riot in Urumqi, the capital of China's remote northwestern Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Reports vary on the number of people ...

Facing a recent erosion of public support for health-care overhaul, President Obama lashed out at his opponents Saturday for spreading "outrageous myths" on the Internet, television, and at town hall forums. Republican leaders, in turn, said it was Obama who is guilty of playing "fast and loose with the facts." They repeated their assertion that the president's proposed government-funded public health insurance option would destroy the current private insurance-based system. "I'm glad that so many are engaged," Obama said in ...

Lloyd Blankfein, the 54-year-old chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, is powerfully perplexed. In the past six months, his investment-banking and securities-trading firm has roared ahead in profitability by taking risks — that other firms would not — for itself and its clients in an edgy market. It has paid back the billions of dollars, and then some, of taxpayer money the government forced it to take last October; raised billions of dollars in capital from private investors, including ...

Peter Gathungu walks more than a mile to a shopping center, where he pays a sizable sum to charge his cell phone. That's because electricity is nonexistent in Gathungu's hometown of Njoro, in northwest Kenya. Landlines and other forms of communication are not as efficient, so Gathungu and millions of others in emerging nations rely on mobile phones. Charging the phones can be a headache in towns and villages where electricity is scarce. Gathungu's troubles may soon be ...

"No individual protected by Blackwater has ever been killed or seriously injured." So says Erik Prince, the 38-year-old former Navy Seal whose security company finds itself at the center of a growing debate over the use of private contractors in Iraq. Blackwater USA Chairman Prince is scheduled on Tuesday to make his first-ever appearance before Congress, along with three other witnesses who will line up before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. A ...