President Obama said Tuesday "there are no quick fixes" to pull the economy out of recession, but he insisted the country will recover. In his second prime time news conference, Obama called on Americans to look to the future with a "renewed confidence that a better day will come." "We will recover from this recession," the president said. "But it will take time, it will take patience, and it will take an understanding that when we all work ...

The Obama administration said Tuesday it's sending hundreds of extra federal agents and new crime-fighting equipment to the Mexican border as the U.S. struggles to roll back a tide of drug-related violence sweeping the Southwest. The renewed push for a stronger law enforcement presence along the border comes as the administration tries to help the Mexican government break up drug cartels believed to be responsible for the killing of roughly 6,500 people last year in Mexico, according to Homeland Security ...

A young blogger arrested in Iran for allegedly insulting supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an Internet posting has died in prison, his attorney said Friday. Attorney Mohammad Ali Dadkhah said Omid Mir Sayafi, reported to be in his 20s, died in Evin prison, which is located in Tehran and known for its wing that holds political prisoners. Dadkhah said a fellow inmate, Dr. Hessam Firouzi, called him Wednesday night with the news -- and said he believed Sayafi would ...

There is flattery, there is shameless flattery, and there are conversations with Arianna Huffington. She'll talk to old men about their libido, beautiful women about their intelligence, the unemployed about their talent and the wealthy about their artistic depth. In her hands, a compliment is the social equivalent of a Tomahawk missile, launched in stealth at a heavily researched target and perilously difficult to defend against. As recently as five years ago, this ability — plus a native braininess and ...

2009 State of the News Media The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism The Gist: The American financial and auto industries aren't the only ones falling apart before the nation's eyes. "Imagine someone about to begin physical therapy following a stroke [and] suddenly contracting a debilitating secondary illness," researchers at the Project for Excellence in Journalism write about the news media's long-overdue embrace of the Internet in 2008, just as a global recession began wreaking havoc on the industry's ...

Reporters, editors and photographers at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer prepared their final contributions to the paper, toasted one another with shots of Wild Turkey and packed up their desks in an "eerily clean" newsroom as the final edition of the paper went to the presses Monday night. The paper published its final print edition Tuesday as the P-I makes a transformation into an online-only news outlet. A skeleton crew of 20 to 25 staffers will remain at the new Seattle PI.com ...

By most accounts, the showdown was pretty brutal. Many watching Thursday night's "Daily Show" on Comedy Central felt that comedian-turned-media-critic Jon Stewart held bombastic financial guru and CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer's feet to the fire. And Cramer flinched. Stewart, known for his zany, satirical take on the news, was serious as he took Cramer's network to task for what Stewart viewed as their "cheerleading" of corporations at the heart of the nation's current economic crisis. And ...

Japan's defense minister has ordered two destroyers to help fight piracy in the waters off Somalia, officials with the defense ministry told CNN. The Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyers will be dispatched Saturday, the defense ministry said. The order, which the Cabinet approved earlier Friday, marks the first policing action for the MSDF, whose major missions overseas have focused on background support such as transport and refueling, Japan's Kyodo news agency said. A bill approved on the same ...

People expressed fear leavened by resolve to carry on Wednesday in the rural southern Alabama area terrorized Tuesday by gunman Michael McLendon, who killed 10 people before fatally shooting himself. Sandy Morris and her young daughter narrowly missed being caught in the gunfire in Samson, where five of the victims were killed at a house near Morris' hair salon. "My little girl and I had just walked across from the feed store. I had gone over to buy her a ...

A long-hidden message has been discovered inside Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch, the Smithsonian's Museum of American History announced Tuesday. Watchmaker Jonathan Dillon was repairing Lincoln's watch in April 1861 when he heard about the attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and wrote a short message on the metal inside the watch, the Smithsonian said. There it remained, unseen for almost 150 years, it said. In a 1906 interview with The New York Times, Dillon reported that as soon as he ...