JERUSALEM - U.S. Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is touring Israel and meeting with Israeli leaders as part of his Mideast tour that has taken him to Iraq and Jordan. McCain, who will also visit France and Great Britain, says he is committed to the Mideast peace process.
John McCain received a warm […]

WHITE HOUSE - President Bush marked the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq with a speech at the U.S. Defense Department.  Mr. Bush took on his critics, saying the war is worth fighting and winning. 
Looking at an audience of men and women in military uniform, the president said the past five […]

WHITE HOUSE - President Bush says the government will intervene again if further action is needed to stabilize U.S. financial markets. The president made the comments a day after U.S. officials issued a $30 billion line of credit to prevent the collapse of one of Wall Street’s biggest investment banks.
President Bush says the Federal Reserve […]

WASHINGTON - The U.S. central bank has cut its key interest rate by 0.75 percent to try to ease an ongoing U.S. credit crisis and prevent a recession in the world’s largest economy.
Tuesday’s move by the Federal Reserve reduces the rate to 2.25 percent, its lowest since February 2005. In a statement accompanying the decision, […]

CAPE TOWN - China depends on Africa for roughly one-third of its imported oil.  And, many Chinese companies also see Africa as a lucrative market to sell oil drilling equipment.  Several Chinese firms are attending this year’s oil industry convention, underway in  South Africa. 
There are roughly 200 vendors at this year’s Oil Africa conference and […]

WASHINGTON - U.S. central bank policymakers are meeting Tuesday to consider lower interest rates in an attempt to address concerns about a weakening economy.
Many economists say the U.S. Federal Reserve could cut the key rate by as much as one percentage point to two percent to try to ease a U.S. credit crisis and stimulate […]

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says Israel will continue to build in occupied east Jerusalem despite international concern that such action may harm the Mideast peace process.
Israel plans to build hundreds of new apartments in Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood in a part of Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinians as the capital of […]

WASHINGTON - The Library of Congress has been preparing for the digital age since the 1960’s, when it used early technology to create and share its bibliographic information in electronic form.  In the 1990’s, the library started distributing digitized versions of its treasures to schools and libraries across the United States.  Now, there are millions […]

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government is using all tools at its disposal to stem a deepening financial crisis and reassure markets after one of America’s largest investment banks was bought out to rescue it from the brink of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, new statistics point to a further weakening of the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, U.S. stocks are […]

WHITE HOUSE - President Bush says the U.S. economy is facing challenging times. The president says the government is taking decisive action.As a jittery U.S. stock market opened for business, the president sought to reassure the American people.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting with his top economic advisors, Mr. Bush said his administration is on […]

BUDAPEST - Officials say three U.N. police officers and two NATO soldiers were wounded in an explosion in Kosovo as they stormed a courthouse occupied by Serb protesters who oppose the region’s breakaway from Serbia. At least 20 demonstrators were also injured. The clashes in Kosovo’s ethnically divided town of Mitrovica are the worst since […]

JERUSALEM - Thousands of pilgrims celebrated Palm Sunday in Jerusalem, beginning the holiest period on the Christian calendar.
The sound of church bells wafted through Jerusalem’s Old City, marking Palm Sunday and the beginning of Easter Holy Week.
Pilgrims from around the world carried olive and palm branches into the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher, believed […]

MOSCOW - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are preparing to meet with Russian officials in Moscow to discuss a U.S. missile-defense plan for Europe. The Americans will meet with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin and president-elect Dmitry Medvedev during the next two days in an effort to ease tensions.
Forty minutes. That […]

WHITE HOUSE - The Bush administration is defending its handling of the U.S. economy at a time of growing public unease. During a series of interviews on American television Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stressed the government will do what it takes to maintain stability in the financial system. 
The White House is waging an all-out effort […]

BUDAPEST - Albanian officials say at least four people have been killed and over 200 injured, including many children in a series of powerful explosions that rocked an army base on the outskirts of the capital Tirana late Saturday. The explosions at a munitions depot has underscored concerns over huge quantities of Stalinist-era weapons in […]

PENTAGON - The U.S. Defense Department announced Friday that it has taken custody of a senior al-Qaida official, who is now being held at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman says the new detainee, Muhammad Rahim, was transferred from CIA custody this week. Whitman describes Rahim as a “high value detainee.”
“He […]

WASHINGTON - The Chairman of the U.S. central bank says his agency will do everything it can to help American homeowners who have been hurt in the mortgage lending crisis.  
Chairman Ben Bernanke says the Federal Reserve is doing whatever possible to give homeowners relief from a record number of home foreclosures, which have been causing […]

STATE DEPARTMENT - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are scheduled to meet their Russian counterparts early next week in Moscow to continue their strategic dialog on missile defense and other issues.
Secretaries Rice and Gates will be meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov in what […]

WHITE HOUSE - President Bush says he is confident that a series of tax rebates and business incentives will help ease the pain of a slowing U.S. economy. 
With the dollar at an all-time low against the Euro and higher prices for food and gasoline depressing retail sales, President Bush says there is no doubt the […]

MIAMI - As many as seven members of a Cuban national soccer team are reported to have defected in the United States shortly after playing a match in the U.S. state of Florida.
Five of the players said they abandoned their team at a hotel in Tampa Tuesday night and plan to seek political asylum in […]

KARACHI - Pakistan is one of the world’s top cotton producers. With one out of every five Pakistani farmers growing the crop, supplying millions of spindles and looms and hundreds of mills, the cotton industry is the country’s largest economic sector, not counting the service industry. But Pakistan is not able to raise all the […]

PENTAGON - The U.S. Defense Department has released a study of 600,000 documents from Saddam Hussein’s archives concluding that while he supported many terrorist groups he did not have a “direct connection” with al-Qaida. But the department’s spokesman says that is not a new conclusion.
According to the executive summary of the Iraqi Perspectives Project report, […]

WASHINGTON - U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has unveiled new guidelines to ease the credit crisis that has dragged the U.S. economy toward recession.The guidelines, developed by a presidential working group, recommend more oversight of mortgage lenders and more stringent lending standards.
Paulson Thursday said poor judgment and poor market practices have led to mistakes in […]

WHITE HOUSE - President Bush says he will veto a terrorist-surveillance bill that contains provisions added by opposition Democrats in the House of Representatives, because he says the bill as written would undermine national security.
President Bush says he will veto the Democrats’ House bill because it is seriously flawed and would make it harder to […]

WASHINGTON - Members of the U.S. Congress say the leaders of newly-independent Kosovo, as well as the country’s Serbian minority and the government in Serbia, must work to ensure ethnic tolerance and protection.
Lawmakers are concerned both that the Kosovo government follows through with commitments it has made to protect ethnic minorities, and that Serbia pursue […]