Sponsors of several House bills focused on breast cancer today urged support for the legislation, bolstering their appeals by repeating the frightening death statistics and recounting harrowing tales of pain and suffering from denied hospital care. The House subcommittee on Health, Energy and Commerce met today to consider the pending bills...

Rescuers struggled through mud and pounding rain today to clear mountain roads and retrieve more than 160 bodies from dozens of landslides that buried villages and cut off towns in the rain-soaked northern Philippines.The latest calamity brought the death toll to more than 450 from the Philippines' worst flooding in 40 years after back-to-back...

The two parties had been in talks about the sale for a number of months.GM is in the process of selling and winding up a number of brands as it looks to reorganise after emerging from bankruptcy protection in July.At the start of this month, the troubled carmaker announced it would be winding down its Saturn brand.This was after the proposed...

A suicide car bomb exploded outside the heavily guarded Indian Embassy in downtown Kabul this morning, killing at least 17 and injuring 84, according to Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior. The large explosion gutted a nearby market, shattered windows and severely damaged two United Nations armored SUVs that were driving by. The vehicles were...

MANILA, Philippines—Officials say rescuers have retrieved more than 160 dead from dozens of landslides that buried villages and cut off towns in the rain-soaked northern Philippines.About 450 people have been killed in the country's worst flooding in 40 years after back-to-back storms started pounding the country's north Sept. 26.Officials...

WASHINGTON -- NASA's moon probe has separated into two pieces as planned, a major milestone toward a Friday morning double-barreled crash into the lunar surface.The smaller probe with five cameras and four other scientific instruments is now trailing behind a 2.2-ton empty rocket hull.That hull will smack into the moon first Friday morning...

Pakistan’s Taliban appears to be in a state of disarray following the apparent killing of their commander Baitullah Mehsud. The Pakistani Taliban, considered a key Al-Qaeda facilitator by Washington, was allegedly killed in a US drone attack, according to Pakistani intelligence reports on Friday. However, Islamabad is still seeking confirmation....

Du Xiaodon is a student from Shanghai who occasionally works at Ikea.The average monthly income for someone from Beijing, Shanghai or Shenzhen - where Ikea has shops - is around 3,000 to 4,000 RMB [€300 - €400]. An EKTORP sofa itself costs 3,500 RMB - the same price as in the US and Europe. So I think that's why most people go there to do...

For most people, Ikea is the place where you spend Saturday afternoon waiting in a long queue to pay for some inexpensive furniture. Not for the Chinese. They've discovered that spending the day reading, sleeping and chatting on a brand new black sofa is much cheaper if you don't leave the shop with it.For some weeks now, Chinese Web users...

LONDON, Oct. 3 -- Henry Kissinger once famously asked, "Who do I call if I want to call Europe?" The answer, thanks to the Irish, may soon be the president of Europe.Irish voters have removed the single greatest barrier to regionwide adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, which would further integrate the European Union -- the world's largest political...

ISTANBUL—A key panel of the International Monetary Fund said Sunday that it supports giving more voting power to emerging market and developing countries, warning that the legitimacy of the institution was at stake.The group's International Monetary and Financial Committee said it backs a shift of at least 5 percent of voting power from countries...

Eight American soldiers were killed when Taliban fighters ambushed two remote outposts in eastern Afghanistan in one of the deadliest attacks on U.S. troops since the war began."This was a complex attack in a difficult area," said Army Col. Randy George in a statement released Sunday.The soldiers were preparing to vacate the isolated outposts...

The full extent of the damage caused by the earthquake that struck the Indonesian Island of Sumatra is still being assessed. In the city of Padang the collapse of a number of tall buildings caused a large number of casualties but many other buildings were still intact. This VOA correspondent traveled to some small villages to the North where...

TEHRAN, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- An Iranian official said a meeting between Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and U.S. envoy William Burns in Geneva was held at the request of the American side, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Sunday. "The meeting of the U.S. delegation with the Iranian delegation was held at the request...