Government

There were days, growing up in her family's New Jersey home, when the attic beckoned to Judy Palya Loether. That's where her mother had stored every mention of Judy's late father. Elizabeth Palya had no time for grieving or falling apart after her husband died in 1948. She remarried three years later, and after that didn't even leave photos around the house.

Like good moms everywhere, Janet Zuhlke made sure her kids got their shots. This proved disastrous for her daughter, Rachel. She was a healthy 5-year-old until a brain injury triggered by a routine vaccination left her mentally retarded, physically handicapped and legally blind.

The mayor of Tehran won Iran's presidency in a landslide Friday, using support from the clerical hierarchy and the country's vast military to restore total control of the government to Islamic fundamentalists and end an eight-year experiment in reform.

Making good on a popular campaign pledge, President Obama will sign an executive order Monday rescinding restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, administration officials said Friday -- instantly making hundreds of millions of new dollars available for the controversial science.

Reclusive Tamil Tiger chief Velupillai Prabhakaran had narrowly escaped death several times during the last three decades even as his obsession with security ensured that untold other assassins never got close.

The commuter rail service known as Metrolink -- Southern California's only true regional mass transit carrier -- gets little money and even less political respect.