Obama speech: ‘We will recover’

President Obama opened his first speech to a joint session of Congress by telling the nation "we will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before." Obama urged Americans to “confront boldly the challenges we face,” saying that the answers to the country’s problems “don’t lie beyond our reach.” “They exist in our laboratories and our universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth,” he said. Obama described the nation’s financial woes as a “reckoning” for poor decisions made by both government and individuals

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Obama insight: Being realistic on economy maintains credibility

When the waiter reached for the plate, President Obama shook his head and smiled as he asked for a few more minutes. He had been talking to his guests, and had barely taken a bite of his lunch. The new president was keeping with a longstanding tradition on days when the commander in chief delivers an address to a joint session of Congress: Around the table Tuesday sat television anchors and the Sunday morning interview program hosts and two senior aides

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Brazilian revelers celebrate Rio Carnival

Aides say the president is expected to focus on the economy when he addresses a joint session of Congress Tuesday evening, but will also touch lightly on foreign policy issues. After much talk of engaging America’s adversaries, chief among them Iran, the Obama administration has made no move so far, pending a policy review.

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Poll: Expectations high for Obama’s speech

A national poll indicates most Americans think President Obama will give a good speech Tuesday night in his address to a joint session of Congress, but expectations are not as high as they were for his inaugural address. Twenty-eight percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp.

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‘Slumdog’ makes history, sweeps Oscars

Years from now it may be a trivia question on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." “What 2008 film based around a well-known game show,” the question may read, ominous music humming in the background, “won the Oscar for best picture” The answer — “Slumdog Millionaire” — is history. It is East meeting West, Bollywood meeting Hollywood, a film that was going nowhere winning the biggest prize in the movie business

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Behind the French Ruling on WWII Deportations of Jews

Following decades of debate over the nation’s wartime history, France’s highest judicial body has formally ruled that the French state bears moral and legal responsibility for the deportation of nearly 76,000 Jews during the nation’s WWII occupation. In doing so, the court officially recognized the willful participation of France’s collaborationist Vichy government in anti-Semitic persecution that had long been attributed to Nazi occupying powers. The ruling Monday, by the Conseil d’Etat, or State Council, was cheered by organizations representing French Jews and families of Jews who were deported during the war — a mere 3,000 of whom ultimately returned

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