Sen. Max Baucus, a leader in the troubled effort in Congress to write a health care overhaul bill, has received more campaign donations from the health industry than any elected federal official except President Barack Obama and three other senators.
In keeping with the ways of Washington and Capitol Hill, Baucus is enjoying this donor largesse — some $3.9 million in contributions from the health care industry since 1989 — principally because of his place as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. It's the panel that has had as much or more to say than any about whatever kind of medical overhaul emerges from Congress.
THE INFLUENCE GAME: Health interests fund senators
Another lawsuit targets founder of Blackwater
Yet another civil lawsuit accuses Blackwater guards of driving through the streets of Baghdad randomly shooting innocent Iraqis.
The latest case accuses Blackwater founder Erik Prince of personally directing murders from a 24-hour remote monitoring "war room" at the private military company's Moyock, N.C., headquarters.
Prince "personally directed and permitted a heavily-armed private army... to roam the streets of Baghdad killing innocent civilians," alleges the suit, filed by four Iraqi citizens.
Doctors warn on climate failure
Failure to agree a new UN climate deal in December will bring a "global health catastrophe", say 18 of the world's professional medical organisations.
Writing in The Lancet and the British Medical Journal, they urge doctors to "take a lead" on the climate issue. In a separate editorial, the journals say that people in poor tropical nations will suffer the worst impacts.
Mafia 'sank nuclear waste ship'
A shipwreck that could contain nuclear waste is being investigated by authorities in Italy amid claims that it was deliberately sunk by the mafia.
An informant told a judge the ship was one of a number he blew up as part of an illegal operation to bypass rules on the disposal of toxic waste.
The sunken vessel has been found 30km (18 miles) off the south-west of Italy. Murky pictures taken by a robot camera show the vessel intact and alongside it are a number of yellow barrels. Labels on them say the contents are toxic.
Anatomy of Injustice: The Unsolved Killings of Journalists in Russia
Only Iraq and Algeria outrank Russia on the list of most life-threatening countries for the press. Seventeen journalists have been murdered in Russia since 2000. In only one case have the killers been punished. This is a sorry record for a great and powerful nation that embarked on democratization after more than 70 years of brutal repression.
That is why the Committee to Protect Journalists is releasing an unprecedented report that calls on the international community to help reverse this slide toward lawlessness. Our mission is to protect journalists, and we are less and less able to do so in Russia.
Rockefeller & Co CEO dies from apparent suicide
McDonald, 56, was found dead in his car near a strip mall in Dartmouth, Massachusetts on Sunday afternoon. Police are still investigating.
Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for seven years - and are the U.S. and Britain covering it up to continue war on terror?
Yet what if he isn't? What if he has been dead for years, and the British and U.S. intelligence services are actually playing a game of double bluff?
CIA Experiments on US Soldiers Linked to Torture Program
What is really happening on the West Bank
The ongoing occupation and the denial of human rights to millions of people is truly not to their liking. However they have neither the emotional strength nor the spare time to take an interest in what is really happening there.
So it's important for me to tell you, my worldview-sharing compatriots, that many settlements have already almost swallowed up all the agricultural lands from villages in their vicinity.
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