Venezuela's government on Wednesday froze bank accounts belonging to board members of Stanford Bank Venezuela, the Venezuelan News Agency said. The bank's founder, Texas businessman R. Allen Stanford, has been accused by U.S. authorities of fraud involving billions of dollars through Stanford International Bank in Antigua and Barbuda. Last Thursday, the FBI announced federal agents had located Stanford in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and served him with papers accusing him and three of his companies of orchestrating a $9.2 billion ...

It was billed as a "coming out party" for one of the GOP's most promising young stars. But after nearly universal criticism was heaped on Gov. Bobby Jindal's high-profile response to President Obama's address to Congress Tuesday night, the Louisiana Republican may be wishing he had stayed home. The criticisms came from all sides of the political spectrum, including from those in conservative circles who have promoted the 36-year-old governor as the GOP's most likely advocate to bring the party ...

More than 60 years after reneging on a promise to the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who fought for the United States during World War II, the U.S. government will soon be sending out checks -- to the few who are still alive. "For a poor man like me, $15,000 is a lot of money," said 91-year-old Celestino Almeda. Still, he said, "After what we have suffered, what we have contributed for the sake of democracy, it's peanuts. It's a ...

No winner of a hard-fought, down-to-the-wire presidential nomination battle ever received a stronger boost from his vanquished foe than Senator Barack Obama picked up from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton here Tuesday. After days of backstage carping among both her supporters and his, no one knew exactly what to expect. Obama didn't just beat a strong and popular candidate; he snatched the reins from the party's old guard and ticked off a former ...

A former student who killed five people at Northern Illinois University last Valentine's Day had been drummed out of the Army for hiding his psychiatric history and expressed admiration for famous murderers, CNN has learned. Steven Kazmierczak was known as "strange Steve" to roommates, studied the Virginia Tech and Columbine massacres and idolized the sadistic killer in the "Saw" horror films, according to documents from the year-long investigation into the NIU killings. The still-unreleased police file on the shootings, which ...

You can tell right away when a magician loses his touch. Even if the tricks work, you see the effort involved. Barack Obama was traveling the US this week, trying to pull more than $800 billion out of his hat to boost the economy. It worked and the Congress is preparing to give him the money for an enormous stimulus plan that has become a test of his new administration. But for the first time in months, Obama lost his ...

Taking no chances, President Obama is exerting last-minute pressure on Congress to approve his stimulus plan by highlighting stories of people affected by the economic downturn. The Democratic National Committee and Obama's Organizing for America are using Obama's vast e-mail list Friday to contact the president's political supporters and point them to a new Web page, where several of these stories can be viewed. The goal is to drum up public support for the measure as Congress prepares to vote ...