Search results for

Melissa Block talks with Tom Goldman about reaction to the Mitchell report on performance-enhancing drug use among Major League Baseball players, including comments from baseball commissioner Bud Selig and Donald Fehr, director of the Major League Baseball Players Association.

A car bomb attack kills Brig. Gen. Francois Hajj, and at least two others. The target of the attack, Hajj, a top Maronite Catholic in the command, was considered a leading candidate to succeed the head of the military, Gen. Michel Suleiman, if Suleiman is elected president.

Some of Major League Baseball's prominent active and former players will be linked to the use of banned performance-enhancing drugs. They will be named in a 300-page report based on former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell's investigation on doping in baseball.

Andrew Lipstein achieves the difficult feat of realistically animating a hedge fund manager who talks and moves as real hedge fund managers might, but who is compelling and not overly alienating.

As a girl, Susan Russo remembers how every Italian-American woman with any pride started cooking "gravy" — tomato sauce with meat — by breakfast on Sundays so it would be ready for a 2 p.m. meal. Russo shares memories of the Sunday dinners of her childhood.

On Capitol Hill, Senators grilled the head of the CIA about interrogation techniques and the destruction of interrogation videotapes. Michael Hayden announced last week that two tapes showing tough interrogations were destroyed in 2005.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted Tuesday to retroactively reduce sentences for crack cocaine offenders. As many as 19,500 prison inmates could be affected by the new guidelines. In the past, crack cocaine offenders were typically sentenced to 50 percent more jail time than powder cocaine offenders.

Coordinated car bombings in the southern Iraqi city left at least 40 dead and more than 100 wounded. Earlier this year, British forces handed over security duties in the province to Iraqi government troops. A similar handover in neighboring Basra is set for next week, raising fears of more violence in the largely Shiite region.

CIA Director Michael Hayden testifies today before the Senate Intelligence Committee about the videotaping of the agency's interrogations of detainees. Those tapes were subsequently destroyed, and members of Congress from both parties hope to use the closed door session to find out why.

Venezuelans vote Sunday on a slate of constitutional reforms that would give President Hugo Chavez greater powers and lift limits on presidential terms. Opponents say this is a power grab by an authoritarian leader. Polls suggest the referendum may be defeated.

One of the top priorities before Congress adjourns for the holidays is a bill that would prevent more than 20 million middle-class Americans from having to pay the alternative minimum tax in 2008. The Senate recently approved a repair to the rule, but neglected to pay for it with spending cuts.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling gives federal judges more discretion when sentencing for crack cocaine and cocaine powder offenses. Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree and Julie Stewart, of the advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums, discuss implications of the high court's ruling.

Actress Annabelle Gurwitch wondered whether the stuff she put in her recycle bin was actually recycled. So she followed her garbage, riding in her neighborhood recycling truck to the processing center and eventually to a landfill.

The latest intelligence report on Iran seems to be an obstacle to policies of President Bush. The report's main conclusion that Iran ceased a nuclear weapons program in 2003 may raise barriers to the possibility of using military force against Iran and questions economic sanctions.

President Bush pledges to be actively involved in upcoming peace talks by Israeli and Palestinian leaders. The president characterized the agreement to hold talks as a beginning.

Last September, 17 Iraqis died in a controversial shooting involving the security firm Blackwater USA. Several Iraqis involved in the incident have sued in U.S. courts. They recall that day in videotaped testimonies, and their accounts differ from Blackwater's.

The Senate passed a $286-billion farm bill on Friday expanding grower subsidies and food stamps. An earlier version of the bill contained a bipartisan amendment designed to scale back the nation's federal crop insurance program, which critics have called one of the government's most inefficient programs.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) talks with Robert Siegel about the CIA's decision to destroy videos of interrogation suspects, and about Republican strategy as a Congressional recess and deadlines for a variety of spending bills loom.

Twenty-five years after its debut, the dystopian-future classic Blade Runner has been released on DVD in a re-edited version called Blade Runner: The Final Cut. Director Ridley Scott talks about that release, as well as about his most recent film, American Gangster.

Car bombs exploded minutes apart Tuesday in central Algiers, heavily damaging a United Nations building and ripping the facade off the wing of a government office. Dozens were killed, including some U.N. employees, and the death toll is still climbing.

President Bush issues praise and condemnation for Congress during a year-end press conference. The legislature's adoption of war-spending bills and a freeze on the alternate minimum tax is met with cheer while he sharply criticizes some of their other work.

The presidential candidates are trying to pack in as many appearances as possible in Iowa and New Hampshire this weekend, before Christmas. Rudy Giuliani is in New Hampshire. His lead in national polls has been slipping.

President Joe Biden declared an emergency for Vermont and authorized FEMA to help coordinate disaster relief and provide assistance.

In recording material for its new series of singles, the hard-rock duo worked with Beck, a mariachi band and a cover of a 1952 Patti Page song. Renee Montagne speaks with White Stripes frontman Jack White.

The farm bill is back on the move, with the Senate considering major changes to the nation's farm policy. One plan, defeated Tuesday, would have ended the current program of commodity crop subsidies that critics say unfairly benefits the few and replaced it with a new crop-insurance program to help all farmers when they need it.