President Obama takes his first foreign trip as head of state Thursday when he travels to Canada. And though he enjoys an 81 percent approval rating north of the border, Obama is expected to tackle several explosive issues with America's largest trading partner. • The war in Afghanistan: Canada has about 2,800 troops in Afghanistan, but Parliament has voted to pull them out by 2011. At the same time, Obama has approved a significant increase in U.S. ...

Former President Bill Clinton was in Austin, Texas, over the weekend to host the Clinton Global Initiative University, which encourages college students and administrators to come up with creative ways to address global issues. CNN's John Roberts sat down with Clinton to ask him about how the Obama administration is performing, how his wife, Hillary Clinton, is doing as secretary of state, and what responsibility he may have for the current financial crisis. John Roberts: Mr. President, in terms of ...

One thing is certain about avian influenza: it's deadly. All three people who contracted the H5N1 strain of the virus in China last year died. In the first six weeks of 2009, eight people have come down with bird flu, and five have died. Another thing is that while the disease has yet to go pandemic, as many doctors fear it could, it remains worrisomely persistent. Every year since 2003, about 100 people in Asia, the Middle East and Africa ...

A ship laden with toxic substances is due to arrive in northeast England for recycling Sunday, ending an odyssey that has seen it turned away from at least three other countries. The French Navy spent years looking for a site that would decommission the former aircraft carrier Clemenceau, now known simply as the Q790. The ship contains asbestos, which can cause cancer. Greenpeace activists boarded the ship off the coast of Egypt in 2006 to prevent it being sent to ...