Sudan’s Future Is Now, U.S. Envoy Says A day after Sudan’s leader coasted to victory in a fraud-tainted election, a senior Obama administration official defended the vote, and said the United States should turn its attention to getting southern Sudan  ready for its likely future as an independent state. “If we don’t redouble our efforts, and work so hard, we know what the predicted outcome will be: it will be violence,” Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, the administration’s special envoy to Sudan, said ...

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has agreed to pay a record $2.3 billion settlement to resolve criminal and civil liability for illegally promoting certain pharmaceuticals, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. Officials from the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services said the world's largest drug company promoted four drugs for use on certain ailments or at dosages that were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. One of those drugs was the anti-inflammatory medication Bextra, which Pfizer pulled ...

Libyans on Tuesday celebrated Col. Moammar Gadhafi's 40 years of rule with lavish pageantry -- complete with a lengthy parade, an elaborate stage production and spectacular fireworks. The massive celebration for 67-year-old Gadhafi came less than two weeks after Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, who was convicted of murdering 270 people by blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, was freed from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds. The world watched as al Megrahi, who has ...

Three men charged with sexually exploiting Cambodian children are being brought back to the United States to face prosecution, the Justice Department announced Monday.

North and South Korea reached an agreement Friday on reunions for families separated for decades by the Korean War, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. Reunions will be held from September 26 to October 1, Yonhap said. The agreement comes after three days of talks between the two sides in North Korea. The talks, which were held at the Mt. Keumgang resort, were the first on the subject in almost two years. They were mediated by the Red Cross, according ...

Brazil has confirmed 557 deaths caused by H1N1 flu, the highest total in the world, the nation's Health Ministry says. The United States has counted 522 fatalities through Thursday, and nearly 1,800 people had died worldwide through August 13, U.S. and global health officials said. In terms of mortality rate, which considers flu deaths in terms of a nation's population, Brazil ranks seventh, and the United States is 13th, the Brazilian Ministry of Health said in a news release Wednesday. ...

The body of one of Iraq's top Shiite leaders arrived Friday morning in Baghdad amid tight security two days after his death of lung cancer. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim died Wednesday in Tehran, Iran, where he received medical treatment for more than two years. Top Iraqi officials and Western diplomats, including Britain's ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Prentice, gathered at Baghdad International Airport as security forces sealed off streets in the capital. President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki also were ...

The State Department said Wednesday it continues to talk to Libyan officials about next month's visit to the New York area by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly continued to hold out the possibility of a compromise over Gadhafi's reported plans to pitch his Bedouin tent on the grounds of a Libyan diplomatic residence in suburban New Jersey during his visit to participate in the annual United Nations General Assembly. Gadhafi last week permitted a large welcome ...

American children aren't necessarily getting smarter or dumber, but that might not be good enough to compete globally, according to numbers cited Tuesday by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. He noted a special analysis put out last week by the National Center for Education Statistics that compares 15-year-old U.S. students with students from other countries in the Organization for Economic Development. It found the U.S. students placed below average in math and science. In math, U.S. high schoolers were in ...

A sampling of reactions to the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, who died Tuesday night at age 77: Harry Reid, Senate majority leader: "Because of Ted Kennedy, more young children could afford to become healthy. More young adults could afford to become students. More of our oldest citizens and our poorest citizens could get the care they need to live longer, fuller lives. More minorities, women and immigrants could realize the rights our founding documents promised them. And more Americans ...