While no one yet knows what ignited Major Nidal Malik Hasan's murderous rage Thursday afternoon, Nov. 5, at Fort Hood, the kindling was hiding in plain sight. The Army had ordered Hasan, wrestling with the conflicting demands of being a soldier, a psychiatrist and a Muslim, to the post with the highest toll of Army suicides. Fort Hood is one of the Army's most stressed posts because of its units' revolving-door deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. Finally, the Army made clear that Hasan couldn't escape ...

For all the encouragement that Republicans took from the angry health-care town halls of August, the fall has not been kind to the GOP. A Washington Post-ABC poll found that only 1 in 5 voters now identifies as Republican. And the "Party of No" label might be starting to stick: a recent CNN poll found that GOP favorability has slipped to its lowest point in a decade — just 36% . Former Republican heavyweights such as Bob Dole and ...

"China is not on the Internet, it's basically an intranet. Everything is banned by the Great Firewall," says Sherman So, co-author of "Red Wired: China's Internet Revolution." With 338 million Internet users in June 2009, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), China is no longer a niche market of the online industry. Chinese is the second most common language on the Internet, according to The Economist, and quickly gaining ground on English. As the former technology writer ...

When Iraq war veteran Angela Peacock is in the shower, she sometimes closes her eyes and can't help reliving the day in Baghdad in 2003 that pushed her closer to the edge. While pulling security detail for an Army convoy stuck in gridlocked traffic, Peacock's vehicle came alongside a van full of Iraqi men who "began shouting that they were going to kill us," she said. One man in the vehicle was particularly threatening. "I can remember his eyes looking ...

China has developed a vaccine for swine flu and is set to become the first country in the world to begin mass inoculations, but there are concerns over possible side effects, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said. WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told CNN, "We have to be ready for the fact that there might be adverse effects." "No matter what vaccine you're looking at, sometimes there are extremely rare side effects. We don't even know what those ...

Despite strenuous entreaties by top U.S. officials, Pakistan has abandoned plans to mount a military offensive against the terrorist group responsible for a two-year campaign of suicide bombings across the country. Although the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan , has been in disarray since an Aug. 5 missile strike from a CIA-operated drone killed its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani military has concluded that a ground attack on its strongholds in South Waziristan would be too difficult. The Pakistani military have ...

Arsenal striker Eduardo could face a two-match Champions League ban if European football's governing body UEFA decide to charge him with diving. UEFA disciplinary officials are reviewing the incident when the Croatia striker won a penalty against Celtic on Wednesday before deciding whether he will be charged. A UEFA spokesman told Press Association Sport: "We are reviewing the match to see whether a disciplinary investigation should be launched." Under UEFA rules, if charged and found guilty Eduardo ...

Inter Milan coach Jose Mourinho is under fire from a Muslim leader in Italy after his criticism of Sulley Muntari for fasting during Ramadan. Ghana midfielder Muntari was taken off after just half an hour of Inter's disappointing 1-1 home draw against Bari as they began their defense of the Serie A title on Sunday. Mourinho pulled no punches in the post match press conference when he implied that the former Portsmouth star had played poorly because he ...

A Red Cross worker was among the 43 people killed in a massive car bombing in southern Afghanistan, the aid organization said Wednesday. A tanker truck full of explosives went off Tuesday in front of a Japanese construction company in Kandahar, officials said. The blast was so intense that windows shattered in homes a kilometer (0.62 miles) away. An Afghan water engineer working for the International Committee of the Red Cross was killed when the blast collapsed the ceiling of ...

Amid turmoil over the treatment of post-election detainees and controversy over the mass trials of political figures, Iran's supreme leader on Saturday appointed a new judiciary chief, Iranian media reported. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tapped Sadeq Larijani -- brother of Iran's powerful parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani -- to replace Hashemi Shahroudi, a vocal hardliner against the opposition movement, who finished his 10-year term, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. Another brother, Mohammad Javad Larijani, is the secretary-general of the judiciary's human ...