Social Issues
Japan local vote plan for foreigners triggers backlash
Mar 21, 2010 01:51 EDT
A plan by Japan's centre-left leaders to give foreigners the vote in local elections has sparked a conservative backlash, showing ethnic minority issues can touch a raw nerve in the island-nation.
Obama urges Dems to come together for health care
Mar 21, 2010 01:44 EDT
Senate Leader Reid joins president in appeal for Democratic unity ahead of pivotal vote. Victory within reach, President Barack Obama exhorted House Democrats on Saturday to stay true to their party's legacy and make history by bringing health insurance to millions of struggling families now left out. Leaders exuded confidence as they defused thorny problems in the countdown to a landmark vote.
Pakistan's poverty pushes its children to work
Mar 21, 2010 01:12 EDT
In impoverished Pakistan, millions of children forgo classrooms for hard labor. Abbas Sajeet is 11 years old, but he doesn't go to school. Instead, he earns 2,500 rupees ($30) a month as an auto mechanic in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
Thousands rally to pull troops from 2 war zones
Mar 21, 2010 01:02 EDT
Thousands carry flag-draped coffins, anti-Obama signs in DC protest; want troops back home. Thousands of protesters ? many directing their anger squarely at President Barack Obama ? marched through the nation's capital Saturday to urge immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Police: Boy, 16, made racial comment at NJ Walmart
Mar 21, 2010 00:33 EDT
16-year-old boy charged with making racial comment over intercom at southern NJ Walmart. A 16-year-old boy who police said made an announcement at Walmart ordering all black people in a southern New Jersey store to leave was charged with harassment and bias intimidation, authorities said Saturday.
Muslim-Jewish tensions roil a Swedish city
Mar 21, 2010 00:01 EDT
Jews say hate crimes and anti-Israel rage are driving some of them out of their Swedish city. Marcus Eilenberg is a Swedish Jew whose family roots in Malmo go back to the 19th century. His paternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors who found shelter in this southern Swedish city in 1945. His wife's parents fled to Sweden from communist Poland in the 1960s.
Lawmaker won't press charges in spitting incident
Mar 20, 2010 23:18 EDT
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., won't press charges after being spat on by Capitol Hill protestor. A congressman who was spat on by a protestor on Capitol Hill says he is declining to press charges, but turns out the Capitol Police say they made no arrests.
Obama urges Dems to come together for health care
Mar 20, 2010 22:50 EDT
Victory within reach, President Barack Obama exhorted House Democrats on Saturday to stay true to their party's legacy and make history by bringing health insurance to millions of struggling families now left out. Leaders exuded confidence as they defused thorny problems in the countdown to a landmark vote.
Lawmaker won't press charges in spitting incident
Mar 20, 2010 21:32 EDT
A congressman who was spat on by a protestor on Capitol Hill says he is declining to press charges, but turns out the Capitol Police say they made no arrests.
Raucous, ugly buildup to House health care vote
Mar 20, 2010 21:20 EDT
House Democrats heard it all Saturday ? words of inspiration from President Barack Obama and raucous chants of protests from demonstrators. And at times it was flat-out ugly, including some racial epithets aimed at black members of Congress.
Raucous, ugly buildup to House health care vote
Mar 20, 2010 21:20 EDT
Pep rally and protesters make for raucous and at times ugly build-up to House health care vote. House Democrats heard it all Saturday ? words of inspiration from President Barack Obama and raucous chants of protests from demonstrators. And at times it was flat-out ugly, including some racial epithets aimed at black members of Congress.
South Africa marks 50th anniversary of massacre
Mar 20, 2010 20:15 EDT
SAfrica marks 50th anniversary of massacre, but residents say change not coming fast enough. A half century ago, police officers massacred 69 black South Africans in the township of Sharpeville, where protesters had burned the passbooks that the white-led apartheid government required them to carry at all times.
Anti-war protesters take to streets, defy US indifference
Mar 20, 2010 19:24 EDT
Thousands of anti-war protesters took to the streets of the US capital Saturday, on the seventh anniversary of the US-led war in Iraq in a show of frustration widely ignored by the media and public.
Obama urges Dems to come together for health care
Mar 20, 2010 19:08 EDT
Victory within reach, President Barack Obama exhorted House Democrats on Saturday to stay true to their party's legacy and make history by bringing health insurance to millions of struggling families now left out. Leaders exuded confidence as they defused thorny problems in the countdown to a landmark vote.
Obama urges Dems to come together for health care
Mar 20, 2010 18:50 EDT
Victory within reach, President Barack Obama exhorted House Democrats on Saturday to stay true to their party's legacy and make history by bringing health insurance to millions of struggling families now left out. Leaders exuded confidence as they defused thorny problems in the countdown to a landmark vote.
Obama urges Dems to come together for health care
Mar 20, 2010 18:26 EDT
Victory within reach, President Barack Obama exhorted House Democrats on Saturday to stay true to their party's legacy and make history by bringing health insurance to millions of struggling families now left out. Leaders exuded confidence as they defused thorny problems in the countdown to a landmark vote.
Obama urges Dems to come together for health care
Mar 20, 2010 18:13 EDT
Victory within reach, President Barack Obama exhorted House Democrats on Saturday to stay true to their party's legacy and make history by bringing health insurance to millions of struggling families now left out. Leaders exuded confidence as they defused thorny problems in the countdown to a landmark vote.
Black support high for Obama's race-neutral stance
Mar 20, 2010 17:46 EDT
Despite pressure from black activists, black support for Obama's race-neutral stance is high. In this banking center walloped by the Great Recession, where unemployment just hit a 20-year high and as many as one in three black people are out of work, blacks could easily be frustrated with President Barack Obama's insistence that a rising economic tide for all will lift African-American boats.
Late Mass. monk's poems recall Khmer Rouge horrors
Mar 20, 2010 16:55 EDT
'Beautiful' poems by Cambodian monk who led Mass. temple tackle horrors of Khmer Rouge regime. During Buddhist monk Ly Van Aggadipo's final days, he wrote often in a notebook. Temple followers knew the nonagenarian spiritual mentor to many local Cambodian refugees was recording some sort of personal history, but they weren't sure what.
Kenyan pastoralists return to ancestral lands
Mar 20, 2010 14:45 EDT
Draped in red blankets, palms skywards, the Endorois, a Kenyan pastoralist tribe, chanted prayers to attract good spirits and scare evil ones from their ancestral lands nearly 40 years after being evicted from them.