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Recent congressional and public attention has focused on access problems at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, which provides medical care to servicemen and women once they have left active duty in a time of war or an official period of hostility. Although investigators note that improvements are under way, they say the VA has a long way to go. With this article

Nearly , active-duty personnel and reservists who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan’s Operation Enduring Freedom have been eligible for VA health care since healthhealth. More than health, have sought it out so far, the Congressional Budget Office reported in October.

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Hillary Rodham Clinton ridiculed Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama for his contention that living in a foreign country as a child helped give him a better understanding of the foreign policy challenges facing the U.S.

“Voters will have to judge if living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face,” Clinton said Tuesday. “I think we need a president with more experience than that, someone the rest of the world knows, looks up to and has confidence in.”

Obama’s retort: “I was wondering which world leader told her that we needed to invade Iraq.”

Clinton’s conclusion: “This campaign is getting kind of heated now. (Content Read …)

FRANKFURT: Europe is hardly a dominant player in writing insurance guarantees for issuers of debt - a mostly American business that makes it easier for municipal governments, schools, banks, and even professional sports clubs to sell highly rated bonds.

Yet the announcement Thursday by two major French banks that they would buy out a bond insurer owned by a Paris-based subsidiary underscored the extent to which the American mortgage crisis continued to infect Europe's financial system in new and unexpected places.

The decision by Groupe Banque Populaire and Groupe Caisse d'Épargne to pay $1.5 billion to take ownership of the insurer, CIFG Holding, from the investment bank Natixis was designed to preserve CIFG's AAA credit rating, which is considered vital to its ability to do business.

Like other insurers, most of which are based in the United States or are American-owned, CIFG was at risk because ratings agencies questioned whether it could guarantee deteriorating mortgage loans.

In the short term, analysts said, the intervention by the French banks soothed the market, because it shored up CIFG's creditworthiness.

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Milo Radulovich died yesterday of complications of a stroke. He was 81.

His name might be unfamiliar to some, but he played a key role in halting the Cold War anti-communist crackdown of the 1950s. And his case was championed by CBS News - and a legendary correspondent.

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In 1953, Edward R. Murrow devoted an entire broadcast to Milo Radulovich, a 28-year-old lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve, who was discharged as a security risk - but not because of anything he had done, CBS News correspondent Bill Plante reports.

My sister and dad have taken, have read, what are now called subversive newspapers, Radulovich told CBS News at the time. (Content Read …)

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama on Tuesday told high school students that when he was their age he was hardly a model student, experimenting with illegal drugs and drinking alcohol.

Obama stopped by a study hall at Manchester Central High School and answered students’ questions about the war in Iraq and his education plan. But when an adult asked about his time as a student, Obama spoke bluntly.

“I will confess to you that I was kind of a goof-off in high school as my mom reminded me,” said Obama, an Illinois Democrat who grew up in Hawaii

“You know, I made some bad decisions that I’ve actually written about. You know, got into drinking. I experimented with drugs,” he said. (Content Read …)

This article was written by Ari Pinkus.

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As schoolteacher Betty Ward evaluates the 16 candidates running for president, uppermost in her mind is: Who will get US troops out of Iraq? She’s mulling over whom to vote for.

Donna Richards will vote for someone who can be trusted and whose aim is to bring about peace. Her choice: undecided.

Attorney Andre Gibeau is seeking a candidate with courage to return to Congress much of the power he believes was usurped by President Bush.

Meet some of New Hampshire’s freethinking and increasingly dissatisfied independents, who quite possibly hold the key to the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. (Content Read …)

Presidential contender Barack Obama on Tuesday called for a $18 billion education plan that he said would fix mistakes his chief Democratic rivals made when they approved President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” effort.

The Illinois Democrat criticized Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards for not fully funding No Child Left Behind. While outlining his own education proposal to prepare students for college and to train teachers to lead in classrooms, Obama said the two rivals haven’t done enough to protect students.

“It’s pretty popular to bash No Child Left Behind out on the campaign trail, but when it was being debated in Congress four years ago, my colleague Dick Durbin offered a chance to vote so that the law couldn’t be enforced unless it was fully funded,” Obama said. (Content Read …)

Secretary of State Debra Bowen sued a major voting machine company Monday, accusing Election Systems & Software of selling unauthorized machines to San Francisco and four counties.

The lawsuit seeks nearly $15 million in penalties and reimbursements. Bowen contends that ES&S sold 972 of its AutoMark A200 voting machines to San Francisco and Colusa, Marin, Merced and Solano counties in 2006 even though the state had not tested and certified the machines.

“ES&S ignored the law over and over again and it got caught,” Bowen said in a statement. “California law is very clear on this issue. (Content Read …)

Turmoil in housing continued to reverberate Tuesday across several parts of the industry.

Freddie Mac, the big mortgage finance compamy, posted a $2 billion loss for the third quarter and warned that it might not have enough capital on hand to cover the mandatory reserves for its mortgage commitments. The company has been battered by a rising wave of foreclosures tied to subprime mortgage defaults and is now “seriously considering” cutting its stock dividend.

Shares of the company plummeted 26 percent in early trading, to $27.83.

“Without doubt, 2007 has been an extremely difficult year for the country's housing and credit markets,” Richard Syron, the chairman and chief executive of Freddie Mac, wrote in a statement.

Syron was not alone in his lament.

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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina: The idea came to Tito Loizeau in a Buenos Aires shopping mall three years ago: Build a Barbie-themed store and little girls and their parents' money will follow.

Loizeau's marketing company had set up a small “House of Barbie” promotion for Mattel Inc. inside the mall.

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