Featured Articles from CNN

Let me get this straight. The people who have been preaching the most about the dangers of American decline are right now helping to hasten American decline. Because if America defaults on its debt, not only will we find ourselves in a far deeper fiscal hole, but the full faith and credit of the United States will be compromised. In our globalized era, that means America will be considered an unpredictable partner and a second-class power. Worst of all, this will be a self-inflicted wound.

Elisabeth "Betty" Broderick, once a socially prominent lawyer's wife who fatally shot her ex-husband and his new wife in bed in 1989, has been denied parole. When Broderick's husband of 16 years dumped her for his young legal assistant, she seethed with a white-hot fury. She was one angry Betty, as a California writer, a long-time Broderick watcher, recently observed. She still is, the California parole board concluded Thursday after hearing Broderick's rambling statement in which she continued to blame her actions on her husband's extramarital affair and their bitter divorce.

A brown bear and her cub mauled a group of teenage boys deep in the Alaskan wilderness, forcing rescuers to scramble early Sunday to help the injured. Two of the teens, participating in a survival skills course, suffered life-threatening injuries, Alaska State Troopers said in a press release, and two had injuries that were labeled "serious, but non-life-threatening. " Megan Peters, a spokeswoman for the state police, said those four are in critical condition, while three others had minor injuries or exposure-related issues.

The brilliant but disgraced President Richard Nixon once gave a speech in which he spoke of the "silent majority" in American politics. These were the people, he observed, who didn't wave signs or march in the streets. Rather, they were the people who quietly went about their lives, going to work, raising their families and giving back to their communities. Nixon gave this speech in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War. But more than four decades later, his basic observation still rings true.

The toilet is broken -- and not because it won't flush. This unsightly piece of technology, which everyone uses but no one seems to think much about, is in desperate need of an overhaul, according to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which launched a challenge to "reinvent the toilet. " The foundation announced $41.5 million worth of grants on Tuesday aimed at getting someone to reengineer the flushing porcelain pot, which has been in use since the 1700s. "No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet," Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the foundation's global development program, said in a statement.

Cash advances are not a new concept in America's brand of capitalism. Many people have seen the commercials with some guy barking out, "Bad credit, no credit, no problem!" Or, "Don't worry about credit, I own the bank!" Anytime some guy is telling you he owns the bank, run. Even though these lenders have been around for a while, signing your car over for a high-interest loan has become a serious financial issue. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of car title loans, allow us to explain.

Congress is at a stalemate over raising the federal debt ceiling, and Americans need to pressure their elected representatives to work out a compromise that will avoid a potentially devastating default, President Barack Obama told the nation Monday night. In his seventh prime time televised address, Obama sought to increase pressure for congressional leaders to reach a deal that would allow the government to continue borrowing money to pay its debts after August 2. The president singled out House Republicans for intransigence and said the political showdown is "no way to run the greatest country on Earth.

House Speaker John Boehner walked away from debt talks with President Barack Obama's administration Friday, raising the stakes in the country's ongoing effort to stave off national default. "In the end, we couldn't connect. Not because of different personalities, but because of different visions for our country," Boehner wrote in a letter to his fellow Republicans. The House speaker said that "a deal was never reached, and was never really close. " "For these reasons, I have decided to end discussions with the White House and begin conversations with the leaders of the Senate in an effort to find a path forward," he wrote.

A leading anti-tax-increase crusader says he doesn't think that letting Bush-era tax breaks expire is violation of a no-tax-increase pledge. So do Republicans now have a way out of the debt ceiling deadlock? Democrats sure seemed to think so Thursday. Grover Norquist, president and founder of Americans for Tax Reform, told The Washington Post's editorial board this week that he wouldn't consider voting to let the Bush-era tax cuts expire at the end of 2012 to be breaking his organization's pledge that most Republicans and some Democrats signed.

America's political leaders are paralyzed. The government is reeling from debt. Corrupt bankers foreclose on people's homes as a brutal recession sweeps the land. We're talking, of course, about the great debt standoff of 1786: Shays' Rebellion. Nervous Americans glancing at the upcoming August 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling are being told that the nation is entering uncharted territory. But historians say they've seen this movie before. Many of the same issues driving this modern-day standoff -- disagreement on how to handle the national debt, ineffective government and a populist citizen's revolt -- drove the 18th-century uprising that's been called America's first civil war. Historians say the lesson that can be drawn from Shays' Rebellion and other transformative events in U.S. history is this: Protracted political gridlock is seldom resolved through compromise.

Younger men are more likely to have a problem dating a woman with children, a newly released survey finds. Tens of thousands of men answered questions about children, money, sex, marriage and many other issues. Some 68% of the men who participated said they believe in the institution of marriage and plan to get married someday, according to AskMen.com, which conducted the Great Male Survey online. About 92% of the men said they would be OK if their female partner or spouse made more money than them.

Avoid the mile-long lines at the Times Square TKTS booth by buying discounted Broadway tickets using one of these eight approaches. Crack the codes When you're buying tickets online, the major agencies -- Telecharge and Ticketmaster -- ask for a promotional code, which can shave between 25 and 50 percent off the face-value price. You can find one of these codes by visiting Playbill, TheaterMania and BroadwayBox.com. These sites list promotional codes for many shows, including blockbuster productions like "Hairspray.

Fifteen castaways marooned on an uninhabited island that's but a small dot in the Pacific Ocean are believed to be safe and in good health, a U.S. Coast Guard official said Saturday. Missing since Tuesday, after their small boat hit a coral reef and overturned, the six children and nine adults were finally spotted. The Coast Guard, which searched 18,642 miles over a period of 76 hours, is sending people to check on the castaways, who are from Chuuk, a group of islands in the Federated States of Micronesia.