The United States knows that the leader of Pakistan's Taliban is dead because he has not appeared in public to prove that he is alive, the top U.S. envoy to the region told CNN on Monday. Richard Holbrooke said that the Pakistani Taliban have not confirmed the death of Baitullah Mehsud because of an ongoing power struggle over his successor. "The reason it's clear he's dead is that if he weren't dead, he'd be giving TV and radio interviews to ...

Kenneth Bacon, a former reporter and Pentagon spokesman who later served as a top advocate of displaced people all over the world, died Saturday, according to Refugees International. He was 64. Bacon had served as the president of Washington-based Refugees International since 2001, the group said in a statement Saturday. The former Wall Street Journal reporter died Saturday morning from an aggressive melanoma that spread to his brain, the statement said. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Bacon, who was ...

Ben Huh is the first to admit his company could easily have wound up on FAIL Blog. For the uninitiated, that's his wildly popular website to which users submit photos and videos documenting such colossally stupid moves as writing a billboard partly in Braille and using a trash can as a bike helmet. Like the rest of the 20-odd websites Huh owns, FAIL Blog was added to his empire for no more specific reason, he says, than "Dude, I ...

A week after a CIA drone strike is believed to have killed Baitullah Mehsud, you'd think the Pakistan military would be rushing to capitalize on the apparent disarray in the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban as rivals fight to succeed him. But rather than mount an offensive in the strongholds of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in South Waziristan — the sort of campaign promised by President Asif Ali Zardari back in May — Pakistan's generals seem content to let ...

Few people would have pegged Marie-Laure Picat as a likely heroine. The portly, plain-looking 37-year-old lived quietly in a village in central France, shunned attention, and said her only real quirk was an adoration of the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants. But on Aug. 10, when it was revealed that Picat had died the previous day, most of France spared a thought — and shed a tear — for the mother who spent what she knew would be the last ...

Iran's influential parliament speaker has called for an investigation into allegations that post-election detainees were raped while in custody, state-run media said. Ali Larijani said that a special parliamentary panel "had carried out investigations into the situation in [Iranian] jails and the treatment of detainees and it should also look into whether jail rape allegations are true or false," Press TV reported, citing Tabnak, a Web site associated with opposition politician Mohsen Rezaie. Meanwhile, Iran's Intelligence Ministry, the government body ...

The battle raging over President Obama's health care plan has spread from across the aisles in Congress to across the country. Senators this week joined their colleagues from the House at town hall meetings as they spent their August recess in their home districts. But disruptive protests are turning town hall meetings into shouting matches and drowning out discussion over what is and isn't in health care plans in the House and Senate. Videos of the protests have been circulating ...

Sonia Sotomayor will make history Saturday when she is sworn in as the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will swear in Sotomayor twice at the Supreme Court. The first ceremony will be private as stipulated in the U.S. Constitution. A second ceremony will be held in front of Sotomayor's friends and family as well as the media. It will also mark the first time the oath-taking ceremony will be open to television cameras ...

Luci Baines Johnson was just 16 years old when she approached her father, President Johnson, with what she considered a reasonable request. "I asked my father if we could have the Beatles come to play at the White House," she recalled. "I was very excited about it." His response A decisive no, "without even any moment of trying to soften the blow," Johnson said in a recent phone interview. The president thought the move would be viewed as self-serving. His ...

It was a heartwarming sight: Laura Ling and Euna Lee landing on U.S. soil and being reunited with their families. Then, after an appropriate amount of time for hugs and kisses, Bill Clinton appeared, descending from his movie-producer friend's plane like an angel from heaven. An emotional Ling practically referred to the former president as a messiah, describing to the media and well-wishers waiting at the airport how she and Lee thought they were being sent to a hard-labor camp, ...