BARACK OBAMA

Pakistani forces exchanged heavy fire on Sunday with Taliban defending their heartland, a day after launching an offensive aimed at bringing the writ of the state to lawless lands on the Afghan border.

U.S. President Barack Obama lashed out on Saturday against the deceptive and dishonest efforts of health insurance companies, who he said are trying to kill healthcare reform, no matter the cost to the country.

The U.S. budget deficit hit a record $1.4 trillion in the just-ended fiscal year, the government said on Friday, as the deep recession and a series of bank rescues cut a gaping hole in public finances. The tally was $162 billion smaller than the White House had forecast in August, but it still amounted to 10 percent of total U.S. economic output, the most for any budget shortfall since World War Two.

President Barack Obama delivered a speech on Friday at Texas A&M University to promote public service.

President Barack Obama left San Francisco on Friday morning after attending fundraising events and went to meet the former president George W. Bush in Texas this evening.

Pakistani forces attacked a Taliban stronghold with aircraft and artillery on Friday, as a suicide bomber killed 12 people in the city of Peshawar in the latest in a wave of militant attacks.

U.S. President Barack Obama hit back at the health insurance industry on Thursday, accusing it of trying to deceive Americans about healthcare reform and vowing to overhaul the industry in Congress.

U.S. President Barack Obama fired back on Thursday at critics who say he has few accomplishments of note in his nine months in office and declared he was just getting started.

A tentative plan to end Honduras' political crisis has not yet been agreed to by ousted President Manuel Zelaya and the country's de facto leader but a negotiator for the leftist toppled in a coup said on Thursday a deal looked closer.

The Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shan Mehmood Qureshi said Thursday the $7.5 billion U.S. aid bill is a sign of friendship and not a threat to the country's sovereignty.

A tentative plan to end Honduras' political crisis hung in the balance on Thursday as negotiators met again on whether President Manuel Zelaya, toppled in a June coup, should be returned to power.

Susana has never set foot outside of Cuba but she has seen plenty of pictures of her friends' houses in Miami, their new cars and even the fancy disco they went to the other night.

A key U.S. congressional committee approved new rules for the largely unpoliced $450-trillion derivatives market on Thursday in a win for the Obama administration.

A Senate panel voted on Thursday to bar drug companies from paying generic drugmakers to delay bringing their cheaper medicines to market.

Maine Senator Olympia Snowe became the most-watched lawmaker in the U.S. healthcare debate by following one of the oldest and most pragmatic of maxims -- that all politics is local.

Democrats opened difficult talks on healthcare reform in the U.S. Senate Wednesday, promising to bridge party divisions on a government-run insurance plan and paying for the overhaul.

Militants launched a string of attacks in the Pakistani heartland and in the troubled northwest on Thursday, killing 31 people after a week of violence in which more than 100 people died.

NATO's top defense officials will examine proposals Saturday for a big troop surge to contain Afghanistan's escalating insurgency but any such move hinges on a decision by the U.S. president, NATO military officials said.

A U.S. congressional committee started nailing down details of a bill to regulate over-the-counter derivatives on Wednesday, seeking to advance a key part of the Obama administration's broad plan to tighten bank and capital markets oversight.

The New Jersey governor's race is virtually tied between Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine and Republican Christopher Christie after months in which the challenger held the lead, a poll released on Wednesday said.

Palestinians will not be pushed into accepting the Mickey Mouse state which Israel has in mind for them as part of a peace deal, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad warned Wednesday.