After nearly nine years, the deaths of more than 115,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 4,400 U.S. troops, and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, President Barack Obama has said the last American soldier would leave Iraq by year’s end with his head held high.

With the release of the iPhone 4S, Apple Inc. has put artificial intelligence into the hands of millions.

The hardest thing about Question 1 is knowing what it means to say yes or no.

A dollar bill, as we all know too well, is a fleeting thing. Not just because it leaves our hands so much more easily than it returns but because, as it changes hands, it wears out within about three years, and often sooner. A coin’s life span, by contrast, averages 30 years.

Legislative and congressional redistricting can cause some of the toughest political fights any state can have.

The timing was fortunate, if mostly coincidental. Within days of the final installment of MaineToday Media’s six-part series on the state’s problems with prescription drug abuse, Attorney General William Schneider announced plans for a task force to address the issue.

The state’s revenue picture has brightened, officials say — $6 million more than expected rolled in during the first quarter of the fiscal year, not to mention $23 million more than the same quarter last year — but budget cutting is still the order of the day.

If being a teenager weren’t hard enough already, now the years when fledglings want the most to flee the parental nest and begin to flap their wings have one more obstacle to freedom:

In the history of modern brutal dictatorships, the 42-year rule of Moammar Gadhafi over the North African nation of Libya had its unique aspects.

Only a tiny sliver of Planned Parenthood activities is tied to abortion, and no federal money can be spent on the procedure. But this limitation isn’t good enough. The organization — and an estimated 5 million low-income women served by Title X — must be cut off.