National

Nearly 50 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that people accused of a crime deserve the right to a defense lawyer, no matter whether they can afford to pay for one. But there's no such guarantee when it comes to civil disputes — like evictions and child custody cases — even though they have a huge impact on people's lives.

For decades, federal and state governments have pitched in to help. But money pressures mean the system for funding legal aid programs for the poor is headed toward a crisis.

A Legal ER

Ohio could very well be the state where what's expected to be a very close presidential race gets decided.

And every indication is that the economy will be the issue that drives the majority of voters to either President Obama or Mitt Romney.

Which explains why on Thursday both the Democratic president and the all-but-official Republican nominee were, again, in Ohio to argue why he and not his opponent should be president starting January 20, 2013.

Alaska Natives are twice as likely to get colon cancer and die from it as the white population in the United States. When Mayo Clinic doctor David Ahlquist took a trip to Bethel, Alaska, in the mid-1990s, that startling statistic caught his attention.

"Here they had one of the world's highest rates of colon cancer and one of the world's poorest outcomes in terms of survival from cancer, because of late diagnosis," Ahlquist says.

Texas financier R. Allen Stanford received a 110 year sentence in prison on Thursday. He bilked investors out of more than $7 billion over 20 years in what was one of the largest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.

"Job killer."

You don't have to listen very long to what passes in American politics for debate about the economy before you hear that phrase. Usually it's wielded by Republicans against their Democratic opponents although Democrats occasionally resort to it, too.

R. Allen Stanford, the billionaire financier and cricket fanatic who was convicted earlier this year of "bilking investors out of more than $7 billion over 20 years in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history," has been sentenced to 110 years in prison, The Associated Press reports.