Pakistani refugees block main road over conditions

Hundreds of refugees on Wednesday blocked a main road in northwest Pakistan, to protest living conditions for some of the 1.5 million Pakistanis forced to flee their homes in the past three weeks. “The government has been making big promises, but none of those were ever fulfilled,” said Hazrat Bilal, a protester and refugee whose family has taken up temporary residence in a primary school

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Businesses sign on to health care reform, Obama says

President Obama said Monday that he has secured the commitment of several key industry groups to do their part to rein in the growth of health care costs. This pledge from the private sector could reduce the growth in health care spending by 1.5 percentage points a year, for a savings of $2 trillion over 10 years, according to senior administration officials.

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Space shuttle Discovery on pace for Sunday launch

The space shuttle Discovery is on pace for a Sunday launch after NASA engineers repaired a leaky gas venting system, officials said Saturday. The leak had canceled a planned launch on Wednesday. NASA hopes the seven-member crew can take off around 7:40 p.m.

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Space shuttle Discovery launch cancelled

The planned Wednesday night launch of space shuttle Discovery has been cancelled due to an apparent leak in the giant external fuel tank, the Kennedy Space Center said. The decision is the latest in a series of delays for the NASA shuttle mission. In total, the mission has been delayed for more than a month

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Obama wants to overhaul education system from ‘cradle to career’

President Obama began to flesh out the details of one of his signature campaign promises Tuesday, outlining his plan for a major overhaul of the country’s education system "from the cradle up through a career." “We have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short and other nations outpace us,” Obama said in an address to the U.S.

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