WASHINGTON - Former Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday “it was not a hard decision� to withdraw Justice Department legal opinions that approved the use of harsh interrogation methods which critics say amount to torture. Ashcroft, testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee, sa...

Fifteen-year-old Nour Aidi has hardly spoken in seven years since Israeli soldiers bulldozed the olive trees around his home, barricaded his family in a room and turned the house into a base, fortified with sandbags, camouflage netting, barbed wire and machine guns. The soldiers stayed 12 months and...

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney’s office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, a former EPA officials mainta...

LONDON - Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian. The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-...

If you’ve attended an event or festival in San Francisco lately - or even just hung out at a city park - you’ve probably seen them. Admittedly, they’re hard to miss. Someone in the group is usually toting a large American flag, and another is often carrying a boom box blaring patriotic music. ...

Getting a story on the evening news isn’t easy for any correspondent. And for reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is especially hard, according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. So she has devised a solution when she is talking to the network. “Generally what I say i...

DUBAI - The UN atomic watchdog chief warned on Saturday that an attack on Iran over its controversial nuclear programme would turn the region into a fireball, as Tehran rejected an Israeli strike as “impossible.� Mohamed ElBaradei also warned that he would not be able to continue in his role as ...

A former military officer who served as chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday said Vice President Dick Cheney probably knew the U.S. military was using torture on Iraqi detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at prisons in Iraq.Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson’s testimony ...

WASHINGTON - When delegates travel to the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions late this summer, they’ll enter a cocoon of corporate largesse. Democrats will fly to Denver on reduced-fare tickets provided by United Airlines. Many will be picked up in plush new vehicles donated by Gener...

San Francisco - Uttering the two simple words “I do,� dozens of same-sex couples were wed in the Bay Area on Monday evening as California became the second state in the nation to grant marriage rights to gay men and lesbians. County clerks braced for an even bigger rush of couples who will tie t...