Search results for

Lawrence Summers, who is departing as president of Harvard University after a five-year tenure, talks with Susan Stamberg about the controversy he generated, and what he thinks are his accomplishments.

After suffering political defeats, and watching his popularity plummet, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to be in the midst of a comeback. The mostly-Democratic state legislature is adopting a bold new budget that gives the Republican Schwarzenegger most of what he wants. Ina Jaffe reports.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is proposing a speed limit for ships entering ports along the eastern seaboard. The goal is to save right whales from being struck and killed. Shipping companies say there is no proof that slowing their vessels will help the endangered mammals.

Israel is demanding the release of a soldier captured during a raid by Palestinian gunmen Sunday at a Gaza border crossing. The attack killed two Israeli soldiers and was the first such ground assault since Israel pulled out of Gaza last summer.

Early Sunday, Palestinian militants used a tunnel to infiltrate Israel and attack a military outpost along the border between Gaza and Israel. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and a third soldier was captured. The assault on the border post marks a serious escalation in Mideast violence, because it involves Hamas.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is in China. It's his first visit there as a member of the Bush administration. He joined the cabinet in July. U.S. business leaders and members of Congress want to see the Chinese currency appreciate in value as a way to reduce the U.S.-Chinese trade surplus.

Corrections officials have complained for years that America's prisons and jails are becoming the country's new asylums for the mentally ill. A recent Justice Department study supports that claim. It says more than half of all prison and jail inmates have experienced mental health problems in the last year.

President Bush addresses the United Nations General Assembly with a speech advocating the spread of democracy in the Middle East. But he's likely to face a skeptical audience that is critical of the U.S. policies in Iraq and Iran.

A Canadian commission ruled Monday there was no evidence linking a Canadian citizen to any terrorist organization. Mahrer Arar was arrested in New York in 2002, sent to Jordan, then Syria, where he says he was tortured during the year he spent in Damascus jails. He was released in 2003.

Some scientists believe the orangutan — a Malay word that translates to "man of the forest" — may soon become extinct, wiped out by the humans it so closely resembles. We travel to the Indonesian island of Sumatra to profile competing plans to save the great ape.