VoteKansas.org

Mogadishu President Yusuf of Somalia resigned after a power struggle. The move could cause further chaos in the near-lawless country as Islamists linked to al-Qaeda scramble for power. “Most of the country is not in our hands,” he said. Troops from neighbouring Ethiopia, which had propped up the Government, are to pull out this week. (AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than 2.1 million drop-side cribs by Stork Craft Manufacturing are being recalled, the biggest crib recall in U.S history, following reports of four infant suffocations....

STUART, Fla. (AP) -- Former French intelligence officer Herve Jaubert believed he was essentially being held captive in Dubai when his passport was confiscated by authorities amid a dispute with his employer, a powerful government-run conglomerate. He claimed he was threatened with torture and worried each day he would be arrested....

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- Legislators irked for months over Gov. Mark Sanford's summertime vanishing act and his tearful revelation that he was in Argentina for a rendezvous with his lover plan to start debating a measure Tuesday that ultimately would remove him from office....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republicans love to get their hands on the Democrats' health care legislation. They show it to the cameras at every opportunity, even piling one version on top of another to make a big pile look even bigger....

The number of excess winter deaths in England and Wales last year was the highest since 1999/2000, figures show.

The Bourbon Reds can cost up to $225 apiece. No, we're not talking fancy oak-barrel-aged liquor. We're talking heritage turkeys, relatively rare breeds of bird raised like their 19th-century counterparts -- free range, natural mating (mainstream turkeys these days are too fat to mate) and slow growing -- all part of the sustainable food production movement. Tens of thousands of people, it turns out, are willing to shell out the cash for these high-priced turkeys for their Thanksgiving dinner tables, according to the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. Makes you wonder: Are no traditions -- however humble and hallowed by time ...

Email

American activists are demanding Obama administration action on the arrest of Chinese human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong, who was dragged away from his home in front of his family after being drawn back to China by the possibility of a meeting with President Obama in Beijing. "President Obama should pick up the phone and call [Chinese President] Hu Jintao," Rep. Christopher H. Smith, New Jersey Republican, said Monday at a Capitol Hill press conference. "This man asked to meet with the president and was turned down." U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman "should be in his car today visiting him ...

Email

The Justice Department on Monday announced terrorism charges against eight people for activities involving an al Qaeda-inspired organization in Somalia -- including recruiting, financing and actual fighting. For the past two years, authorities say, about 20 young men, all but one of whom are of Somali decent, have left their homes in the Minneapolis area to go fight with al-Shabaab, a terrorist group that has pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. The group is engaged in a civil war against Somalia's government with the goal of imposing a new regime based on Islam's strict Shariah law. "The recruitment of young ...

Email

OPINION/ANALYSIS: Willing student or not, reality continues to give Barack Obama a late education in how the world -- including the United States -- actually works. The president and his attorney general are giving the rest of us an Ivy League tutorial in constitutional law. When Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. awarded the Islamic radicals the opportunity to take their rhetorical carnival of murder and mayhem to New York City for the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 assault on America, Mr. Holder insisted that he was only acting in the American judicial tradition ...

Email

The swine flu has become the vehicle for a homeland security message former Sens. Bob Graham and Jim Talent have been trying to deliver over the past year: Quit cracking eggs to vaccinate the public. The Florida Democrat and Missouri Republican, who presided over a congressional panel charged with assessing terrorist threats and weapons proliferation, say that even though bioterrorism — not nuclear proliferation — is the nation's leading terrorist threat, the country isn't equipped to respond quickly. "This is an epidemic that didn't just attack us by ambush, we've had much time to prepare, yet many people who want ...

Email

Edward M. Kennedy will be a tough act to follow, even for the Kennedys. His death, coupled with the decision by family members not to seek the seat he held for nearly five decades, has prompted predictions that the family's long-running political dynasty is over. There's talk the Kennedy political bloodlines are running thin. Some say the younger brood lacks the grit and zest for political combat that drove the liberal Democrat to become one of the leading politicians of the past 40 years. Yet it's probably too early to write off one of America's most powerful and popular families. ...

Email

Former Sen. Norm Coleman, Minnesota Republican, who narrowly lost his bid for a second term in a bitter eight-month recount battle with Democrat Al Franken, may be poised for an improbable comeback after a new survey showed that half of all Republicans polled would support him if he enters the gubernatorial race next year. Mr. Coleman has largely stayed out of the limelight since the state's Supreme Court unanimously ruled in June that Mr. Franken, a one-time "Saturday Night Live" comedian, had defeated him by a razor-thin 312 votes out of 2.9 million cast in the 2008 election. State Republican ...

Email

A top House Democratic leader says Americans no longer fear bringing terrorist suspects from Guantanamo Bay detention center to the United States, a shift in public opinion that he says will fuel the defeat of Republican measures to block the transfers. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, special assistant to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said he knows Democrats likely will have to go on the record with votes supporting the Obama administration's decision to send five accused Sept. 11 terror plotters being held at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to federal court in New York City. The Maryland Democrat said ...

Email

TOPEKA, Kan. | U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore, the only Democrat in Kansas' congressional delegation, said Monday he will not seek a seventh term, calling it "time for a new generation of leadership." Mr. Moore — who represents the 3rd District, a heavily Republican district in suburban Kansas City — said in a statement from his Washington office that he would finish out his term, which ends in January 2011. Mr. Moore said trying to represent "the moderate mainstream of the district" was the most exciting and frustrating job he has had. "As the first Democrat elected to represent this district ...

Email

UNDER THE BIG TOP While Republicans struggle to lure more demographic groups under their proverbial "big tent," President Obama has a big, fat tent moment of his own Tuesday night. It's his first official state dinner and it's a doozy: 400 guests on the White House lawn, in a tent, in the rain. There will be a 21-gun salute. And forget any traditional American roast beast at table: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a vegetarian. Will there be curry on the menu? Will Michelle Obama wear a sari? Will vegetables from the White House garden make it to the ...

Email

Retail gasoline prices headed downward to begin one of the country's busiest travel weeks, with more than 33 million people expected to hit the road for the Thanksgiving holiday. Americans are remaining closer to home because of anxiety about the economy and demand for gasoline is weaker now than it was last year at this time. That is telling because a gallon of gasoline then cost only $1.93 as the economic crisis unfolded in 2008. Unlike last year, however, gas is not falling sharply and though prices fell overnight, it still cost $2.64 per gallon on average nationally and in ...

Email

In releasing his budget proposal last week, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour might have tapped into his own version of economic stimulus. Call it the Lobbyist Full Employment Act of 2010. Mr. Barbour announced a wide range of ideas that immediately made people angry, and it's a safe bet that interest groups will convert their pent-up anger into action once the Legislature convenes in January. He proposed merging the eight current universities into five, reducing the number of school districts from 152 to 100 and closing some mental health centers. He said the Mississippi School for the Arts should close shop ...

Email

MINNEAPOLIS | Holiday travelers waited a little longer to book their flights this year, likely holding out for better deals and waiting to see whether they would still have a job. And some aren't going at all. Travelocity reports that the average advance purchase fell to 55 days for Thanksgiving travel this year. That's 2.6 days later than last year's average. People flying in late December - around Christmas - waited to buy until 88 days in advance, down from 96 days last year, for domestic trips. For international trips, the average purchase was made 7.5 days later, or 110 ...

Email

FLORIDA Astronauts take third spacewalk CAPE CANAVERAL | A pair of astronauts zipped through the third and final spacewalk of their mission Monday, installing an enormous oxygen tank at the International Space Station and accomplishing everything else on their list. "You mean there's nothing left for us to do?" Marine Corps Lt. Col. Randolph Bresnik asked as the spacewalk wrapped up. He was assured no work remained. Col. Bresnik, still celebrating the weekend birth of his daughter, Abigail Mae, was jazzed up for the excursion. He and Dr. Robert Satcher Jr. tackled their biggest spacewalking chore early on, removing the ...

Email