With the Senate Finance Committee set to approve its health care bill this week, Democrats are tantalizingly close to bringing legislation that would make sweeping changes in the nation's health care system to the floor of both houses of Congress.

Party leaders still face immense political and policy challenges as they combine rival proposals - two bills in the Senate and three in the House. But the broad contours of the legislation are in place: millions of uninsured Americans would get subsidized health benefits, and the government would move to slow the growth of health spending.

Senior Democrats said they were increasingly confident that a bill would pass this year. "I am Scandinavian, and we don't like to overstate anything," said Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and an architect of the Finance Committee bill. "But I have a solid feeling about the direction of events."

Firing rockets and rifles, Taliban militiamen attacked American and Afghan military outposts in a daylong siege on Saturday that killed eight U.S. soldiers and two Afghan security forces in one of the deadliest battles in months, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.

The fighting began early Saturday morning and raged throughout the day in a remote region of eastern Afghanistan in Nurestan province, which borders Pakistan. Staging their attack from steep mountainsides that overlook the outposts in the valley below, on a morning when weather made visibility poor, the Taliban fighters attacked the small American and Afghan bases using rifles, machine guns, grenades and rockets, according to U.S. military officials.

By Sunday morning, when the U.S. military made the attack public in a statement, the area was "largely secure but I do think there is still some activity," said Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, a U.S. military spokeswoman.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vitriolic attacks on the Jewish world hide an astonishing secret, evidence uncovered by The Daily Telegraph shows.

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian -- a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The court-appointed trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff's business filed a $199 million lawsuit against four of his family members on Friday.

The trustee, Irving Picard, is suing: Madoff's brother, Peter, who was the investment securities firm's chief compliance officer; two sons, Andrew and Mark, who served as co-directors of trading; and niece, Shana, who was the compliance director.

The family's management responsibilities included trading operations, customer relationships, and legal and regulatory compliance. "Yet they were completely derelict in these duties and responsibilities," Picard said in the complaint. "As a result, they either failed to detect or failed to stop the fraud, thereby enabling and facilitating the Ponzi scheme at [the firm]."

JERUSALEM -- Appearing thin and wan, but lucid and very much alive, Gilad Shalit, the captured Israel soldier whose fate has gripped the Israeli nation's soul for more than three years, appeared in a video on Friday holding a Palestinian newspaper dated Sept. 14.

Israel obtained the DVD on Friday in a deal brokered by German and Egyptian negotiators in which Israel released 19 Palestinian women from its jails and is expected to release a 20th prisoner on Sunday.

It was Israel's first glimpse of Sergeant Shalit since June 2006, when he was seized in a cross-border raid by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups and dragged, injured, into Gaza in June 2006.

Sergeant Shalit's family decided after seeing the recording to allow it to be made public. It was broadcast on all Israeli television channels on Friday afternoon.

In the video, which is two minutes and 42 seconds long, Sergeant Shalit, now 23, appears thin, but healthy. Clean-shaven, dressed in a khaki military-style clothes and sitting again dark a plain light-colored wall, he holds up a copy of the Hamas-published "Palestine" newspaper, dated Monday, Sept. 14, 2009.

WASHINGTON -- Employers eliminated more jobs than expected last month as the unemployment rate climbed to 9.8%, another sign that a rapid recovery in the labor market is unlikely.

Nonfarm payrolls declined by 263,000 in September, the Labor Department said Friday, noting that the largest job losses were in construction, manufacturing, retail trade and government. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires survey had expected a 175,000 decrease.

Tony Blair is in line to be proclaimed Europe’s first president within weeks if the Irish vote “yes” in today’s referendum.

Senior British sources have told The Times that President Sarkozy has decided that Mr Blair is the best candidate and that Angela Merkel has softened her opposition.

The former Prime Minister could be ushered into the European Union’s top post at a summit on October 29.

With more than 1,200,000 views of one 54-second clip on YouTube alone, it is the abiding minute of the 2009 US Open. Serena Williams held nothing back in a racket-brandishing, expletive-laden tirade at a lineswoman in the women’s singles semi-final last month and the governors of the sport may do likewise with a decision that could have enormous repercussions for the American.

Oct 1st, 2009 | Late-night host David Letterman acknowledged on Thursday's show that he had sexual relationships with female employees and that someone tried to extort $2 million from him over the affairs. CBS says an employee has been charged with attempted grand larceny in the case.

Letterman told his story during a taping of his show, mixing in jokes to an audience that seemed confused about what it was. He called it a "bizarre experience" that left him feeling disturbed and menaced.

Elizabeth Smart testified today she was raped "on a daily basis up to three or four times" by Brian David Mitchell, the homeless preacher who allegedly kidnapped Smart when she was 14 and held her captive for nine months.

Smart was never face to face in court with Mitchell, who was removed from the courtroom with his hands and feet shackled after he refused the judge's orders to stop singing a church hymn.

Smart, who is now 21, testified that on the first night she was taken from her home in 2002 she was guided on a three-mile hike to a canyon behind her home where Mitchell performed an impromptu wedding ceremony.

"He performed a ceremony to marry me to him and after that he proceeded to rape me," said Smart, clad in a white blouse and black pants.

Pop star Michael Jackson had a strong heart and was a "fairly healthy" 50-year-old, according to an autopsy report obtained in the US.

His weight was in the acceptable range for a man of his height, according to the Associated Press.

But the singer, who died of a heart attack in June, had punctured arms, tattooed lips and eyebrows and suffered from lung damage and some arthritis.

Jackson's death was ruled as homicide caused by a powerful anaesthetic.

For the lovers of the iPhone, it's like daddy and mommy are getting a divorce. If that wasn't the case--if Apple and Google weren't calling it quits--why would Apple buy a mapping company?

Steve, tell us it isn't so!

The tight integration between the iPhone and Google, especially its mapping products, is a big part of why people love their iPhones. Hearing the Apple has bought its own mapping company, Placebase, is unsettling.

The deal, which supposedly happened in July, added talent to a supposed "Geo" unit inside Apple. Nothing wrong with that, but before Apple starts messing with Google Maps on iPhones, it needs to think very seriously about the consequences.

If a new Apple mapping product is to replace Google Maps, it needs to be done by offering customers a choice of mapping providers. If Apple is good enough, people will switch and eventually the rest can be moved over by force, if necessary. But, only after Apple Maps does everything that Google Maps does--and then some.

Tanks and other heavy weaponry rumbled across Beijing behind goose-stepping troops as China celebrated 60 years of communist rule Thursday with its biggest-ever military review -- a symbol of its rapidly expanding global might.

The elaborate ceremony for the founding of the People's Republic unfolded on national television but behind tight security that excluded ordinary people from getting near the parade route through Tiananmen Square.

Precisely choreographed, the two-and-half-hour event hewed closely to tradition. President Hu Jintao, in a Mao jacket instead of a business suit, rode in an open top Red Flag limousine to review the thousands of troops. A parade of kitschy floats, flanked by more than 100,000 people, lauded the communist revolution and the Beijing Olympics. Even the weather cooperated, with aggressive cloud-seeding by the government having brought overnight showers to disperse smog and bring in blue skies.

The biggest difference was the weaponry, more than had been shown before and most of which was domestically produced: dozens of fighter jets and hundreds of tanks, artillery and trucks carrying long-range, nuclear-capable missiles.