Which is more valuable? To provide a $150,000 liver transplant for an ailing child of indigent parents? Or to use that money for prenatal care that may enhance the life expectancy of fetuses being carried by 150 expectant mothers? To most Americans, the either/or aspect of the question is morally repugnant -- surely the leader of the democratic capitalist world can afford both. Yet a growing number of health experts argue that the U.S., in fact, no longer has the ...

Every day, as he ambles through the cobwebbed halls of the New Orleans criminal court building, public defender Richard Teissier feels he violates his clients' constitutional rights. The Sixth Amendment established, and the landmark Gideon Supreme Court case affirmed, the right of poor people to legal counsel. At any given moment, when Teissier is representing some 90 accused murderers, rapists and robbers, his office has no money to hire experts or track down witnesses; its law library consists of a ...

The budget is the main arena in which the nation as a whole decides on the allocation of resources. What we spend money on — and what we don't — reflects what we value as a nation. But making those choices isn't at all simple. It is in the federal budget that the breakdown of consensus in America is most vivid and most dangerous. One side of the political divide wants to cut taxes and shrink existing ...

At first glance, the election of Nigeria's incumbent President, Goodluck Jonathan, who took nearly 60% of the votes cast, signals more of the same. Jonathan's victory means another term for the country's dominant People's Democratic Party , giving it an unbroken four-term hold on power since the return of democracy in 1999. Since Jonathan is a Christian southerner, his win will rankle northern Muslims, so the Muslim-Christian violence that plagues Nigeria will continue. In fact, the latest bouts, ...

In the golden years, at a dinner party for the Duchess of Devonshire, Ethel Kennedy slipped in a worldly addendum to the grace she said before the meal. "And please, dear God, make Bobby buy me a bigger dining-room table." It was an understandable plea from the mistress of Hickory Hill, the Robert Kennedy family's child-beswarmed antebellum homestead in McLean, Va. After Bobby's death, Ethel was left to raise a brood of 11. Today the nine surviving R.F.K. offspring form ...

Broadening the number of health care professionals who can administer vaccine, New York Gov. David Paterson issued a sweeping executive order Thursday officially declaring a state of emergency due to the increase in H1N1 cases, including 75 H1N1-related deaths in New York state.

A Cuban blogger who has criticized her government has been denied permission to travel to New York to pick up a prestigious journalism award Wednesday. Yoani Sanchez writes a blog that gets more than 1 million hits from around the globe every month, and Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world last year. So when Columbia University said it would award her the Maria Moors Cabot Prize special citation, Sanchez asked the Cuban ...

An influential adviser to the U.S. commander in Afghanistan declared Friday that anything less than 25,000 extra international troops in the country would not be enough to win. David Kilcullen, who also advised U.S. commanders in Iraq, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour the window of opportunity to turn around the war is closing. Kilcullen's comments came as President Barack Obama, only hours after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, again met with his top advisers to discuss strategy and troop levels ...

President Obama will meet with top congressional leaders from both parties Tuesday to discuss the war in Afghanistan, according to two Democratic officials. Obama will be joined by, among others, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the heads of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees in the House and Senate, the officials said. The meeting comes in the midst of the Obama administration's comprehensive review ...

Angry workers beat to death a human resources vice president after he laid off 42 employees at an auto-parts manufacturing company in southern India, police said Wednesday.