El nino predicted, may provide relief for U.S. weather woes. WASHINGTON — Relief may be on the way for a weather-weary United States with the predicted warming of the central Pacific Ocean brewing this year that will likely change weather worldwide. But it won't be for the better everywhere. The.... More

Abortion law pushes Texas clinics to close doors. McALLEN, Tex. — Shortly before a candlelight vigil on the sidewalk outside, employees of the last abortion clinic in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas shut the doors early Thursday evening, making legal abortion unavailable in the poorest.... More

Companies test plans to cut their health care costs. At Walgreen, the giant drugstore chain, employees now have a much broader choice of insurers and plans. Once limited to two options, either from a local Blue Cross plan or UnitedHealthcare, workers can now choose among as many as 25 plans from.... More

U.S. economy adds 175,000 jobs, and unemployment ticks up. The American economy added 175,000 jobs last month, a pace that was better than economists had expected and well above the anemic job gains recorded in December and January. Still, the latest figures for hiring were down from last year’s.... More

Pitfalls seen in turn to privately-run long-term care. NASHVILLE — Even as public attention is focused on the Affordable Care Act, another health care overhaul is underway in many states: an ambitious effort to restrain the ballooning Medicaid cost of long-term care as people live longer and.... More

New report ranks Alzheimer's as third leading cause of death. Alzheimer’s disease likely plays a much larger role in the deaths of older Americans than is currently reported, according to a new study that says the disease may be the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. The Centers for Disease.... More

Early treatment found to clear H.I.V. in second baby. BOSTON — When scientists made the stunning announcement last year that a baby born with H.I.V. had apparently been cured through aggressive drug treatment just 30 hours after birth, there was immediate skepticism that the child had been.... More

Consumers allowed to keep health plans for two more years. WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, grappling with continued political fallout over its health care law, said Wednesday that it would allow consumers to renew health insurance policies that did not comply with the new law for two more.... More

The story behind the SAT overhaul. In July 2012, a few months before he was to officially take over as president of the College Board, David Coleman invited Les Perelman, then a director of writing at M.I.T., to come meet with him in Lower Manhattan. Of the many things the.... More

Medical marijuana bill clears first hurdle at Minnesota legislature. A bill that would legalize medical marijuana in Minnesota cleared its first hurdle at the Legislature on Tuesday night after hours of anguished testimony from parents and patients. In tears, Joni Whiting told legislators the story of the.... More

Injections are providing protection against AIDS in monkeys, studies find. BOSTON — Researchers are reporting that injections of long-lasting AIDS drugs protected monkeys for weeks against infection, a finding that could lead to a major breakthrough in preventing the disease in humans. Two studies by different.... More

California's driver's license program hits an unexpected hurdle. BELL, Calif. — The auditorium was packed. There were single mothers, day laborers, grandparents pushing infants in strollers and teenagers interpreting for parents. All of them faced a potentially life-changing prospect: Within a year,.... More

How fat may harm the brain, and how exercise may help. Obesity may have harmful effects on the brain, and exercise may counteract many of those negative effects, according to sophisticated new neurological experiments with mice, even when the animals do not lose much weight. While it’s impossible.... More

E-cigarettes, by other names, lure young and worry experts. SAN FRANCISCO — Olivia Zacks, 17, recently took a drag of peach-flavored vapor from a device that most people would call an e-cigarette. But Ms. Zacks, a high school senior, does not call it that. In fact, she insists she has never even tried.... More

The breast cancer racial gap. A troubling racial divide in breast cancer mortality continues to widen in most major cities around the country, suggesting that advances in diagnosis and treatment continue to bypass African-American women, according to new research. More

Obama budget would expand low-income tax break. WASHINGTON — When President Obama releases his proposed annual budget on Tuesday, he will grab his best opportunity of the year to show, in one comprehensive package of hard numbers and precise detail, how he would have the government address.... More

Study finds suicidal tendencies are evident before deployment. Amid growing alarm at the rate of suicide among members of the military and confusion about possible causes, researchers reported on Monday that most of the Army’s enlisted men and women with suicidal tendencies had them before they enlisted,.... More

Cities move to help those threatened by gentrification. PHILADELPHIA — Cities that have worked for years to attract young professionals who might have once moved to the suburbs are now experimenting with ways to protect a group long deemed expendable — working- and lower-middle class homeowners.... More

Disney ends funding to Boy Scouts over gay policy. LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Company will cut funding to the Boy Scouts of America beginning in 2015 because of a policy that bans gay adult leaders in the organization. The Boy Scouts organization is "disappointed" by the decision, which.... More

Infant sleeping machines at maximum volume may harm hearing. Devices that produce soothing sounds in order to lull infants to sleep can be loud enough at maximum volume to damage their hearing, researchers reported Monday. Infant sleep machines emit white noise or nature sounds to drown out everyday.... More

Rare mutation kills off gene responsible for diabetes. A new study based on genetic testing of 150,000 people has found a rare mutation that protects even fat people from getting Type 2 diabetes. The effect is so pronounced — the mutation reduces risk by two-thirds — that it provides a.... More

New law's demands on doctors have many seeking a network. TAYLORSVILLE, Ky. — Dr. Sven Jonsson, a primary care physician in this rural community, is seeing a steady tide of new patients under President Obama’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act. And so far, it is working out for him. His.... More

State report finds deep flaws in care for mentally ill. Public care for the mentally ill in Minnesota is deeply flawed, with patients cycling in and out of county jails and hospital ERs because of a severe shortage of psychiatric beds and community treatment, according to a stark new review by the.... More

Six months of gay marriage has state confronting profound change. Thom Bieniek remembers when he had to go by the name “Marissa” just to communicate with his partner Tyler Bieniek during Tyler’s combat deployment in Afghanistan in 2009. Now that burden is gone: Last fall, for the first time, he even got.... More

Of crime and punishment, aging and aerobics. It was a stinging 9 degrees on a recent Thursday morning when Thomas Mickens bounded into the Rochdale Village Senior Center in Jamaica, Queens. He was 15 minutes early to teach his 8:30 a.m. aerobics class, and his boisterous entrance was.... More

Discovery leads Yale to revise a chapter of its black history. On the campus of Yale University, Edward Bouchet has long been a venerated name. Hailed as the first African-American to graduate from Yale College, in 1874, he went on to be the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. (and only the sixth person.... More

New health fix offers subsidies for insurance policies bought outside.... WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Friday that it would allow some people to receive federal subsidies for health insurance purchased in the private market outside of health insurance exchanges. The sudden shift was the latest in a.... More

How many calories in that ice cream? New food labels aim to help. WASHINGTON — Ice cream lovers beware: The government knows you're unlikely to stop after half a cup. New nutrition labels proposed Thursday for many popular foods, including ice cream, aim to more accurately reflect what people actually eat..... More

Winter-weary Americans plead with travel agents: "get me out of here." CHICAGO — Shannon Frauenholtz has had it with winter. Barely able to stomach the television news with its images of snowbound cars, she heads to the tanning salon, closes her eyes and imagines she's back in Mexico, where she's already.... More

Business and the minimum wage: an editorial. Much of the discussion about the Democratic proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by 2016 has rightly focused on the workers who will clearly benefit from the move. But what about businesses? How would higher wages affect.... More

What helps motion sickness? It’s not a new medicine, but Dr. John P. Carey of Johns Hopkins University often recommends the scopolamine patch to his patients. The patch, sold under the brand name Transderm Scop, requires a prescription, and works by blocking brain.... More

A call to arms on a Vermont heroin epidemic. RUTLAND, Vt. — Block by block, this city in central Vermont has been fighting a heroin epidemic so entrenched that it has confounded all efforts to combat it. On Cottage Street, the foot traffic is heavy in and out of No. 24 ½, a red.... More

Best Buy job cuts target 2,000 managers around the U.S. Best Buy Co. Inc. apparently told about 2,000 managers around the United States on Wednesday that they were being laid off, a move that would be the company’s biggest job reduction since July 2012 as it continues to cut costs following a.... More

Health law's small co-ops have mixed success so far. The rented offices of HealthyCT, a new insurer in Connecticut, bustle with the energy of a start-up. The sales force takes pride in noting that HealthyCT is a truly local outfit, governed by members, rather than a for-profit behemoth like.... More

New F.D.A. nutrition labels would make 'serving sizes' reflect actual.... WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration for the first time in two decades will propose major changes to nutrition labels on food packages, putting calorie counts in large type and adjusting portion sizes to reflect how much Americans.... More

Arizona's governor vetoes bill on refusal of service to gays. PHOENIX — Ending a day that cast a glaring national spotlight on Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, vetoed a bill on Wednesday that would have given business owners the right to refuse service to gay men, lesbians and other people on.... More

Obama to announce plan to empower young black men. WASHINGTON — For much of Barack Obama’s presidency, he has sought to avoid being defined by his race or gender, often emphasizing that he is the leader of all Americans. On Thursday, Mr. Obama will use the power of his office to focus on.... More

Man describes solitary confinement: "I saw men lose their minds." WASHINGTON – For nearly 15 years, Damon Thibodeaux lived in near-isolation on death row, locked in a cell 23 hours a day. Under the watch of armed guards, he had 60 minutes daily to shower, exercise and walk the halls of the Louisiana State.... More

Man describes solitary confinement: "I saw men lose their minds." WASHINGTON – For nearly 15 years, Damon Thibodeaux lived in near-isolation on death row, locked in a cell 23 hours a day. Under the watch of armed guards, he had 60 minutes daily to shower, exercise and walk the halls of the Louisiana State.... More

How to get fit in a few minutes a week. High-intensity interval training, a type of workout that consists of very brief bouts of very strenuous exercise, has become enormously popular in recent years. A main reason is that although such workouts are draining, they can be both very.... More

California endangered species: plastic bags. LOS ANGELES — On a recent drizzly day, Esha Moya found herself standing outside a grocery store in South Los Angeles, her half-dozen paper bags falling apart in the rain, wishing she had a few small items that had been free and plentiful her.... More

A non-profit lender revives hopes of sub-prime borrowers. WASHINGTON — About 200 people struggling to become homeowners filled the pews of Plymouth Congregational church on a recent Saturday morning. Some were self-employed, others short on a down payment, many branded by credit problems. Mortgage.... More

Obesity rate for young children plummets 43% in a decade. Federal health authorities on Tuesday reported a 43 percent drop in theobesity rate among 2- to 5-year-old children over the past decade, the first broad decline in an epidemic that often leads to lifelong struggles with weight and higher.... More

Online personality quizzes go viral on social media. NEW YORK — For a compulsive online quiz-taker like Chrissy Noh, the temptation was too great to resist: "Which sandwich are you?" After answering a series of unscientific, seemingly unrelated questions, which included selecting her favorite.... More

Walk and talk therapy is gaining ground. There’s no couch. In fact, there aren’t even any chairs. When Minneapolis therapist Tammie Rosenbloom meets her clients for a session, they go for a walk around a lake. If it’s too cold out, they head into the downtown skyways or even a.... More

When men get breast cancer. Breast cancer is not always pink. That is the message of a provocative new photography series featuring the faces, and scars, of men with breast cancer. The photos, by the New York-based fashion photographer David Jay, are part of his.... More

Governor of Arizona is pressed to veto bill. PHOENIX — As the Arizona Legislature sent a bill to her desk Monday that would grant business owners the right to invoke religion to refuse service to gays and others, Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, faced pressure from many corners to veto.... More

Notion of colorblind colleges faces reality check. ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A brochure for the University of Michigan features a vision of multicultural harmony, with a group of students from different racial backgrounds sitting on a verdant lawn, smiling and conversing. The scene at the.... More

Ole Miss chapter suspends chapter, expels three in noose hanging on statue.... OXFORD, Miss. — A fraternity chapter at the University of Mississippi was indefinitely suspended Friday by its national organization and three of its freshman members were kicked out because of their suspected involvement in hanging a noose.... More

Five reasons why you shouldn't work too hard. Forget Russian figure skater Julia Lipnitskaia spinning in a blur with her leg impossibly held straight up against her ear. The sight of skier Bode Miller collapsing with emotion at the end of a race dedicated to his brother while NBC cameras.... More

Plan to limit some drugs in Medicare is criticized. An alliance of drug companies and patient advocates, joined by Democrats and Republicans in Congress, is fiercely opposing an Obama administration proposal that would allow insurers to limitMedicare coverage for certain classes of drugs,.... More

Religious right in Arizona cheers bill allowing businesses to refuse to.... In New Mexico, a photographer declined to take pictures of a lesbian couple’s commitment ceremony. In Washington State, a florist would not provide flowers for a same-sex wedding. And in Colorado, a baker refused to make a cake for a party.... More

Arizona approves right to refuse service to gays. The Arizona Legislature gave final approval Thursday evening to legislation that allows business owners asserting their religious beliefs to refuse service to gays, drawing backlash from Democrats who called the proposal "state-sanctioned.... More

Accident rates improve for older drivers. WASHINGTON — Safety researchers expressed concern a decade ago that traffic accidents would increase as the nation's aging population swelled the number of older drivers on the road. Now, they say they've been proved wrong.Today's drivers.... More

Minnesota's new way of seeing patients has improved health care results,.... A new model of primary care that emphasizes disease prevention and doctor-patient collaboration appears to be lowering Minnesota’s medical costs while raising the quality of care patients receive. Patients seen at “health care homes,”.... More

With 2015 budget request, Obama will call for an end to era of austerity. WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s forthcoming budget request will seek tens of billions of dollars in fresh spending for domestic priorities while abandoning a compromise proposal to tame the national debt in part by trimming Social.... More

New York will remove 400 children from homeless shelters. In the face of New York’s mounting homeless crisis, Mayor Bill de Blasio will announce on Friday that his administration is removing hundreds of children from two city-owned homeless shelters that inspectors have repeatedly cited for.... More

Racist episodes continue to stir Ole Miss campus. OXFORD, Miss. — On the campus of the University of Mississippi, a few hundred yards from a monument honoring Confederate soldiers, a statue of the university’s first black student, who enrolled in 1962 amid rioting that left two people dead.... More

Colorado expects tax bonanza from legal marijuana sales. DENVER — For Colorado’s new flock of recreational marijuana growers and sellers, Thursday was Tax Day — their first deadline to hand over the taxes they had collected during their inaugural month of sales. And as store owners stuffed cash.... More

Research shows talking to babies early really matters; long sentences are.... New research shows that both how much and how well parents talk with babies and toddlers help to tune the youngsters' brains in ways that build crucial language and vocabulary skills — a key to fighting the infamous "word gap" that puts poor.... More

More than 100,000 people are taking a class from Yale; here's what it.... The first-ever MOOC taught by a Nobel Prize-winning academic – the Financial Markets course taught by Yale’s Robert Shiller – has already signed up more than 100,000 people from around the world. Measured in terms of sign-ups only,.... More

Federal lawsuit accuses for-profit schools of fraud. LINWOOD, N.J. — It was the electronic monitor around a student’s ankle that first gave Kelli J. Amaya serious doubts about the Harris School of Business. The young man with the monitor was studying to be a pharmacy technician, and Ms. Amaya.... More

Study finds greater income inequality in nation's thriving cities. WASHINGTON — If you want to live in a more equal community, it might mean living in a more moribund economy. That is one of the implications of a new study of local income trends by the Brookings Institution, the Washington research group..... More

In New York, a push for compensated surrogacy. A month before their baby’s due date, Brad Hoylman and David Sigal got a call from the woman they had hired to have their child. She was having contractions; come right away. Mr. Sigal, a filmmaker, had the more flexible schedule. So after a.... More

Americans say they'd dump a carrier that slowed their Web traffic. Americans overwhelmingly dislike the idea of having their traffic throttled or blocked. And they're threatening to vote with their feet if Internet providers don't play along. A survey conducted by Consumer Reports finds that 71 percent of U.S.... More

Household debt increases, but survey finds Americans seem more cautious. Americans have been borrowing money at rates not seen since the recession began, but they are vigilant about paying their debts on time, according to data released Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The findings from a government.... More

Obamacare volunteers struggle to find the uninsured. HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — The hunt for the uninsured in Broward County got underway one recent afternoon when 41 canvassers, armed with electronic maps on Samsung tablets, set off through working-class neighborhoods to peddle the Affordable Care Act.... More

Minimum wage increase would have mixed results, C.B.O. report says. WASHINGTON — A popular Democratic proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, championed by President Obama, could reduce total employment by 500,000 workers by the second half of 2016. But it would also lift 900,000 families out of.... More

Doctors train to spot signs of A.D.H.D. in children. Jerry, 9 years old, dissolved into his Game Boy while his father described his attentional difficulties to the family pediatrician. The child began flitting around the room distractedly, ignoring the doctor’s questions and squirming in his.... More

Growing student debt may hurt housing recovery. The growing student loan burden carried by millions of Americans threatens to undermine the housing recovery’s momentum by discouraging, or even blocking, a generation of potential buyers from purchasing their first homes. Recent improvements.... More

Delta Air Lines gives employees highest ever profit-sharing. It’s a good day for nearly 80,000 Delta Air Lines employees, who will get the company’s biggest-ever profit-sharing checks for last year’s performance. Delta, which has a major hub at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and.... More

Driving under the influence - of marijuana. If you are pulled over on suspicion of drunken driving, the police officer is likely to ask you to complete three tasks: Follow a pen with your eyes while the officer moves it back and forth; get out of the car and walk nine steps, heel to toe,.... More

A fresh case for breast self-exams. Scientists produced dismal news last week about mammograms. After tracking 90,000 women for 25 years, researchers in Canada found that those who received regular mammograms did not experience fewer deaths from breast canceror from all.... More

At Newark Airport, the lights are on and they're watching you. Visitors to Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport may notice the bright, clean lighting that now blankets the cavernous interior, courtesy of 171 recently installed LED fixtures. But they probably will not realize that the light.... More

In the debate over health care, 'real people' become human volley balls. WASHINGTON — In the Republican response to theState of the Union address, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington lamented the travails of “Bette in Spokane,” whose insurance policy had been canceled because of the health care.... More

Defeat of auto union in Tennessee casts its strategy in doubt. CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Bob King has pursued one goal above all as president of the United Automobile Workers — to unionize several foreign-owned auto plants in the South. He said he viewed that as pivotal if his once-mighty union was to.... More

Crossing borders and changing lives, lured by higher State minimum wages. ONTARIO, Ore. — Carly Lynch dreams of a life one day on the professional rodeo circuit, but for now she commutes 20 miles from Idaho to this small city in eastern Oregon to work as a waitress. There are restaurant jobs closer to home, but she.... More

U.S. marijuana policy in Colorado, Washington fuel push for legal pot.... In a former colonial mansion in Jamaica, politicians huddle to discuss trying to ease marijuana laws in the land of the late reggae musician and cannabis evangelist Bob Marley. In Morocco, one of the world's top producers of the concentrated.... More

A victory for gay rights in Virginia, but opponents vow to fight on. Supporters of gay rights celebrated on Friday their latest courtroom victory, the overturning of Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage, as opponents condemned the decision as an infringement on states’ rights and vowed to take the issue to.... More

As services expand, cable bills keep rising. WASHINGTON — Of the many benefits that Comcast executives said would flow to consumers from its proposed $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable — more innovation, advanced technology, improved service — the one it did not mention.... More

Volkswagon vote is defeat for labor in South. CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — In a defeat for organized labor in the South, employees at the Volkswagen plant here voted 712 to 626 against joining the United Automobile Workers. The loss is an especially stinging blow for U.A.W. because Volkswagen did not even oppose the unionization drive. More

Medicines manufactured in India set off safety worries. NEW DELHI — India, the second-largest exporter of over-the-counter and prescription drugs to the United States, is coming under increased scrutiny by American regulators for safety lapses, falsified drug test results and selling fake.... More

Health insurance enrollment on target in January. For the first time since the federal and state health-insurance marketplaces opened early last fall, the number of people who signed up for coverage exceeded the government’s expectations for the month in January, bringing the overall total.... More

Court ruling hobbles prosecution for unpaid child support. A Rochester (Minnesota) man who ignored years of demands to pay child support for his two kids cannot be punished because there is no proof he didn’t otherwise care for them, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. One justice who.... More

Blood clot risk lasts for 12 weeks after pregnancy. Researchers say women have a higher risk of blood clots for 12 weeks after childbirth, twice as long as has been believed. Pregnant women are more prone to blood clots because substances that thicken the blood naturally rise, and blood from the.... More

G.O.P. Senate leaders avert debt ceiling crisis. WASHINGTON — It was a moment of real drama in a chamber known for its somnambulism. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, counted votes on his hand, at one point holding up three fingers as he searched for the remaining.... More

Staggering through another winter burial. A powerful storm system that left thousands of commuters stranded in the South and caused power failures along the East Coast swept into New York early Thursday morning, blanketing the city yet again in a cover of white. More

Obama to launch effort to help young men of color. President Obama will launch a significant new effort this week to bolster the lives of young men of color, seeking to use the power of the presidency to help a group of Americans whose lives are disproportionately affected by poverty and prison.... More

Gay football player's message met with support. Scott Cooper was at his Minneapolis home Sunday scrolling through Facebook on his phone when someone shared a link that former Missouri defensive end and NFL draft prospect Michael Sam had announced he is gay. Cooper, who recently ended his.... More

Minnesota students: you'd better not forget your lunch money. Some Minnesota children go to school hungry and leave even hungrier. A majority of public school districts in this state deny hot lunch — or any lunch at all in some cases — to children who can’t pay for them. Some schools take the meals.... More

Heroin's small town toll, and a mother's grief. HUDSON, Wis. — Karen Hale averts her eyes when she drives past the Super 8 motel in this picturesque riverfront town where her 21-year-old daughter, Alysa Ivy, died of an overdose last May. She has contemplated asking the medical examiner,.... More

Obama extends health law delay for some employers. The Obama administration announced on Monday that it would postpone enforcement of a federal requirement for medium-size employers to provide health insurance to employees and allow larger employers more flexibility in how they provide coverage. More

Is the end near for cigarette smoking in America? Maybe. ATLANTA — Health officials have begun to predict the end of cigarette smoking in America.They have long wished for a cigarette-free America, but shied away from calling for smoking rates to fall to zero or near zero by any particular year..... More

Disruptions: For a restful night, make your smartphone sleep on the couch. We’ve all been there. You wake up in the middle of the night and grab your smartphone to check the time — it’s 3 a.m. — and see an alert. Before you know it, you fall down a rabbit hole of email and Twitter. Sleep? Forget it. Well,.... More

LeanIn.org and Getty aim to change women’s portrayal in stock photos. SAN FRANCISCO — There is the businesswoman, wearing a suit and glasses and holding a briefcase. There is the mother, smiling as she pours milk into her children’s cereal bowls at the breakfast table. There is the multitasker, holding a.... More

NFL prospect proudly says what teammates knew: he's gay. Coaches at the University of Missouri divided players into small groups at a preseason football practice last year for a team-building exercise. One by one, players were asked to talk about themselves — where they grew up, why they chose.... More

Fight over minimum wage illustrates web of industry ties. WASHINGTON — Just four blocks from the White House is the headquarters of the Employment Policies Institute, a widely quoted economic research center whose academic reports have repeatedly warned that increasing the minimum wage could be.... More

Want to make a change in your health plan? Now you can. The Obama administration has quietly reworked rules and computer code for HealthCare.gov to try to stem an outpouring of discontent by some Americans who have discovered that the health plans they bought do not include their old doctors or.... More

AOL chief ignites firestorm over 401(k) cuts and ‘distressed babies’.... It should have been a glorious week for AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong. His company’s quarterly earnings, announced Thursday, were the best in a decade. “Olympian,” he declared. Instead, he angered employees, insulted parents with.... More

Car seats save lives, but are still underused. More than 9,000 children under 12 died in motor vehicle accidents from 2002 to 2011, in many cases because they were not properly restrained in child seats or seatbelts. Though the death rate decreased over those years, to 1.2 per 100,000.... More

Stepping up to stop sexual assault at colleges. BYSTANDER INTERVENTION is so easy to grasp, even by the most inexperienced college freshman, that the program may well be the best hope for reducing sexual assaults on campuses. Mostly it is common sense: If a drunk young man at a party is.... More

'Aid in dying' movement takes hold in some states. DENVER — Helping the terminally ill end their lives, condemned for decades as immoral, is gaining traction. Banned everywhere but Oregon until 2008, it is now legal in five states. Its advocates, who have learned to shun the term “assisted.... More

Debit card users beware; all plastic is not protected equally. Before you whip out your debit card, consider this: if some crafty thief hacks the store terminal and goes on a shopping spree using your data, you could be held responsible for $500 in charges. That’s because debit cards do not share the.... More

Krauthammer: The health care myths we live by. Swedish researchers report that antioxidants make cancers worse in mice. It’s already known that the antioxidant beta-carotene exacerbates lung cancers in humans. Not exactly what you’d expect given the extravagant — and incessant —.... More

Learning to think outside the box. IT BOTHERS MATTHEW LAHUEand it surely bothers you: enter a public restroom and the stall lock is broken. Fortunately, Mr. Lahue has a solution. It’s called the Bathroom Bodyguard. Standing before his Buffalo State College classmates and.... More

Four gay rights activists arrested in St. Petersburg. ST.PETERSBURG, Russia — Russian police have arrested four gay rights activists protesting in St. Petersburg on the opening day of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. During Friday's protest, four gay activists unfurled a banner quoting the.... More

Weakness continues as 113,000 jobs are added in January. The American economy added 113,000 jobs in January, a disappointing showing that is likely to spur fears that the labor market is poised for yet another slowdown. Before the report from the Labor Department on Friday morning, economists had.... More

This is why your smartphone battery has the life span of a fruit fly. When news leaked out this week that Apple was experimenting with a new way of charging its anticipated iWatch – possibly using kinetic movement, magnetic induction or solar power — it should have been an “a-ha” moment for innovators.... More

Boehner proposes linking debt-limit hike to a restoration of recent cuts.... House Speaker John A. Boehner scrambled to sell a new debt-ceiling solution to his Republican colleagues on Wednesday, encouraging them to demand a restoration of recently cut military benefits in exchange for a one-year extension of the.... More

New surveillance technology can track everyone in the area for several.... DAYTON, Ohio — Shooter and victim were just a pair of pixels, dark specks on a gray streetscape. Hair color, bullet wounds, even the weapon were not visible in the series of pictures taken from an airplane flying two miles above. But what the.... More

Narcissists' dream: a selfie-friendly phone. “Selfie” was Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year in 2013. And selfies are powerful business; #me is the third-most-common tag on Instagram, appended to more than 184 million photos, according to the app’s Web viewer, Webstagram..... More

Study suggests fears about longer childbirths are misplaced. Epidural anesthesia lengthens the second stage of labor, the one in which women push. But a study published on Wednesday has found that epidurals are associated with an even longer duration in the second stage than is generally recognized,.... More

CVS Caremark plans to snuff out tobacco sales at stores nationally due to.... CVS Caremark is kicking the habit of selling tobacco products at its more than 7,600 drugstores nationwide as it focuses more on providing health care. The nation's second-largest drugstore chain said Wednesday that it will phase out cigarettes.... More

Senate passes long-stalled farm bill, with clear winners and losers. WASHINGTON — No one was happier than Danny Murphy, a Mississippi soybean farmer with 1,500 acres, when the Senate on Tuesday passed a farm bill that expanded crop insurance and other benefits for agribusiness. “It’s a relief,” Mr..... More

Health care law projected to cut the labor force. WASHINGTON — A Congressional Budget Office analysis released Tuesday predicted that the Affordable Care Act would shrink the work force by the equivalent of more than two million full-time positions and recharged the political debate over the.... More

In texting era, crisi hotlines put help at youths' fingertips. The conversation began abruptly, with the anonymous teenager getting straight to the point: She had just told her family that she was really a boy trapped in a female body. “Now my family hates me,” she told a crisis counselor. The.... More

Freeing workers from the insurance trap. The Congressional Budget Office estimated on Tuesday that the Affordable Care Act will reduce the number of full-time workers by 2.5 million over the next decade. That is mostly a good thing, a liberating result of the law. Of course,.... More

First women ski jumpers ready to prove their mettle. No single word was powerful enough to convey Jessica Jerome’s joy in late December, when she became the first American female ski jumper to clinch a spot in the 2014 Sochi Games, where women’s ski jumping will make its Olympic debut on Feb.... More

Preschool's benefits extend to parents. If preschool is having a moment, it is due in part to its appeal to voters as a program designed to help children: preschool is “the most cost-effective” educational intervention, one that can set children up for greater success not just in.... More

Olson and Boies, legal duo, seek role in 2 cases on gay marriage. WASHINGTON — Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, the star legal duo who defied skeptics by successfully challenging California’s ban on same-sex marriage, are seeking to play a central role in the next round of marriage cases that appear.... More

Preschool push moving ahead in several states. Preschool is having its moment, as a favored cause for politicians and interest groups who ordinarily have trouble agreeing on the time of day. President Obama devoted part of his State of the Union address to it, while the deeply red states of.... More

Ethics questions arise as genetics testing of embryos increases. Her first thought after she heard the news, after she screamed and made her mother and boyfriend leave the room, was that she would never have children. Amanda Baxley’s doctor had just told her, over a speakerphone in her psychiatrist’s.... More

Employers find returns in workplace wellness investments. Janis Smith feels a lot healthier — and more confident — since shedding 65 pounds in six months, and that has helped in her job leading employee training for 1st Mariner Bank. “Being in front of a classroom of people … I don’t feel.... More

Abortions declining in U.S., study finds. The abortion rate among American women declined to its lowest level in more than three decades in 2011, according to a new report released Monday that is widely considered the country’s most definitive examination of abortion trends. The 1.... More

The middle class is eroding; just ask the business world. In Manhattan, the upscale clothing retailer Barneys will replace the bankrupt discounter Loehmann’s, whose Chelsea store closes in a few weeks. Across the country, Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants are struggling, while fine-dining.... More

Battles loom in many states over what to do with surpluses. In a year when three dozen governors are up for election, unexpectedly robust revenues from taxes and other sources are filling most state coffers, creating surpluses not seen in years and prompting statehouse battles over what to do with the.... More

Method of study criticized in group's health policy tests. The idea seemed transformative. The Affordable Care Act would fund a new research outfit evocatively named the Innovation Center to discover how to most effectively deliver health care, with $10 billion to spend over a decade. But now that the.... More

Long-term jobless will get new help. WASHINGTON – President Obama has persuaded some of the nation's largest companies, including Wal-Mart, Apple, General Motors and Ford, to revamp their hiring practices to avoid discriminating against applicants who have been out of work for.... More

Over 50, working against time in America's harsh job market. As hard as he tried, Michael Duffy couldn’t find a job to match the one he’d lost. For two decades he earned six figures selling equipment to factories. But at 62, he kept getting turned away, one job interview after another. So last fall.... More

Digital underground is behind the attack on Target. They are known as “coders” and “carders,” high-tech gurus who live in a digital underworld. Their identities have been elusive, but their tactics and profiles are emerging in the aftermath of the malware attacks against Target and.... More

Technophoria: When no one is just a face in the crowd. Hey, big spenders. Facial recognition technology, already employed by some retail stores to spot and thwart shoplifters, may soon be used to identify and track the freest spenders in the aisles. The NEC Corporation, for instance, is working.... More

Severe drought has California fearing the worst. LOS ANGELES — The punishing drought that has swept California is now threatening the state’s drinking water supply. With no sign of rain, 17 rural communities providing water to 40,000 people are in danger of running out within 60 to 120.... More

Federal retirement wave looms. The federal workforce is building toward a potential retirement wave in coming years, with more than a third of career federal employees projected to be eligible for collecting their end-of-career benefits by September 2017, compared to just 14.... More

Welcome to Salt City, where cars, sidewalks and shoes bear winter's briny.... Salt is everywhere, lingering far longer than our gratitude for its service. It coats our cars in gray talcum. It covers our sidewalks in long saline swirls. It appears as ghostly footprints across our floors in spite of the extra towels we lay.... More

Retailers ask: where did teenagers go? Luring young shoppers into traditional teenage clothing stores has become a tough sell. When 19-year-old Tsarina Merrin thinks of a typical shopper at some of the national chains, she doesn’t think of herself, her friends or even.... More

Parched, California cuts off tap to agencies. LOS ANGELES — Acting in one of the worst droughts in California’s history, state officials announced on Friday that they would cut off the water that it provides to local agencies serving 25 million residents and about 750,000 acres of.... More

Snacks laced with marijuana raise concerns. DENVER — All day long, customers at LoDo Wellness Center, one of Colorado’s new recreational marijuana stores, reach into the refrigerator and pull out tasty ways to get high. They buy sparkling peach and mandarin elixirs, watermelon Dew.... More

A lost boy finds his calling. Someone dims the lights, and an old video clip begins to roll. In a dank room, dozens of children with shaved heads crouch naked in puddles of urine, fight over a bucket of gruel, lie tethered to radiators. One little girl’s leg juts up at a.... More

Hispanics often lead the way in their faith in the American Dream, poll.... After five days painting hotel rooms in Ohio and an all-night bus ride, Jorge Garcia reached his Falls Church home at 4 one recent morning. His wife, Sara, was waiting up with hot Bolivian-style soup in the small house he had remodeled with.... More

Responding to critics, gynecology board reverses ban on treating male.... After months of protest from doctors and patients, a professional group that certifies obstetrician-gynecologists has lifted a ban it imposed in September and now says its members are free to treat men. The decision, announced Thursday by.... More

In the event of an air emergency, remember what Alf said. The spoof movie “Airplane!” is becoming the basis for something real, 34 years after its release. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is reprising his role as the pilot Roger Murdock in Delta Air Lines’ in-flight safety video which began appearing.... More

GOP's immigration blueprint leaves party at odds and Democrats hopeful. CAMBRIDGE, Md. — The House Republican leadership’s call on Thursday to provide legal status for 11 million undocumented workers, and possible citizenship for those brought to this country as children, caused sharp division within the party.... More

Passengers recall days of misery as cruise ship returns home. BAYONNE, N.J. — Passengers aboard a cruise ship on which hundreds fell ill recalled days of misery holed up in their rooms as it returned to its home port Wednesday from a Caribbean trip cut short by what is suspected to be among the largest.... More

Giving kids with peanut allergy doses of peanut flour helped. LONDON — An experimental therapy that fed children with peanut allergies small amounts of peanut flour has helped more than 80 percent of them safely eat a handful of the previously worrisome nuts. Although experts say the results of the.... More

New concern about testosterone and heart risks. A large new study found that prescription testosterone raised the risk of heart attacks in older men and in middle-aged men with a history of heart disease, prompting some experts on Wednesday to call for more extensive warning labels on the.... More

U.S. economy grew 3.2% in fourth quarter. The economy grew 3.2 percent in the final quarter of 2013, shrugging off the effects of the fall’s government shutdown and debt standoff, and raising hopes that the recovery was finally getting more robust. The pace of expansion in October,.... More

Obesity is found to gain its hold in earliest years. For many obese adults, the die was cast by the time they were 5 years old. A major new study of more than 7,000 children has found that a third of children who were overweight in kindergarten were obese by eighth grade. And almost every child.... More

DNA shows ancient hunter had blue eyes, dark skin. BERLIN — A hunter-gatherer who lived in Europe some 7,000 years ago probably had blue eyes and dark skin, a combination that has largely disappeared from the continent in the millennia since, scientists said Tuesday. The discovery, published.... More

A culture of toxic leaders afflicts U.S. military, documents show. There are miserable bosses, and then there are toxic military commanders. Air Force Maj. Gen. Stephen D. Schmidt was unquestionably among the latter in the view of some staff members under his thumb. A profane screamer, he ran through six.... More

Executive order may be only option, but it comes with limits. President Obama’s State of the Union address represented a study in scaled-down ambition. A man who entered the White House yearning for sweeping achievements finds himself five years later threatening an end run around gridlock on Capitol.... More

Frigid blast disrupts life in South and Midwest as emergencies are.... CHICAGO — In Alabama, snow made roads impassable and forced some schools to prepare to keep students overnight. Many people in metro Atlanta planned to sleep in offices and hotels. And here in Chicago, where winter usually brings a shrug,.... More

A court's all-hands approach aids girls most at risk. SAN LEANDRO, Calif. — Toni J., an effervescent 16-year-old who talks on speed-dial, lives with 11 family members in West Oakland, on a street buffeted by gang activity and poverty. Her mother died of an overdose, her father in a revenge.... More

Some bad habits get a little respect. Do you pick your skin? Bite your nails? Tear the calluses off your heels? Then you’ve won a small, if bittersweet, victory. Your condition, now known as “excoriation disorder,” made it into the latest edition of the Diagnostic and.... More

U.S. relaxes some data disclosure rules. The Obama administration says it will allow Internet companies to give customers a better idea of how often the government demands their information, but will not allow companies to disclose what is being collected or how much. The new rules.... More

Genetic weapon against insects raises hope and fear in farming. Scientists and biotechnology companies are developing what could become the next powerful weapon in the war on pests — one that harnesses a Nobel Prize-winning discovery to kill insects and pathogens by disabling their genes. By zeroing in on.... More

Vision care insurer VSP to cover Google Glass. Google and VSP, the nation’s biggest optical health insurance provider, have struck a deal to offer subsidized frames and prescription lenses for Google Glass, the Internet-connected eyewear. The announcement could take wearable devices out.... More

Obama will raise minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10. WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to sign an executive order requiring that janitors, construction workers and others working for federal contractors be paid at least $10.10 an hour, using his own power to enact a more limited version of a.... More

Republicans decry Obama plans to bypass Congress to advance agenda. President Obama's strategy to bypass Congress this year with executive orders to advance his policy agenda received a cold reaction on Sunday from Republican leaders, who accused the White House of arrogance and sidestepping the political.... More

Postal rates to rise today; court challenges ahead. WASHINGTON — Postage rates on first-class letters and most other mail will rise Monday by 3 cents to help the financially ailing U.S. Postal Service recoup millions of dollars it lost during the economic downturn. But the largest rate.... More

Helping smokers quit - or not start in the first place. “Even 50 years after the first surgeon general’s report on smoking and health, we’re still finding out new ways that tobacco kills and maims people,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,.... More

Cannabis legal, localities begin to just say no. YAKIMA, Wash. — The momentum toward legalized marijuana might seem like an inevitable tide, with states from Florida to New York considering easing laws for medical use, and a full-blown recreational industry rapidly emerging in Colorado and.... More

Committing to play for a college, then starting 9th grade. SANFORD, Fla. — Before Haley Berg was done with middle school, she had the numbers for 16 college soccer coaches programmed into the iPhone she protected with a Justin Bieber case. he was all of 14, but Hales, as her friends call her, was.... More

Flexing mental muscles keeps aging brain healthy. Ken Lehmann is taking his Alzheimer’s diagnosis very seriously: He’s making a game of it. Three and a half years ago, the retired furniture executive from Edina learned he was in the early stages of the disease. Since then, the.... More

Supreme Court: nuns exempt from Obamacare birth control rule - for now. The Supreme Court said Friday that a group of Colorado nuns does not have to comply with the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers offer insurance plans that cover contraceptives while the nuns pursue a legal challenge of that.... More

U.S. cites evidence of anti-semitism in school district. Federal authorities say evidence collected in a lawsuit filed by three Jewish families against an upstate New York school district “is sufficient for a jury to find that the district failed to respond to pervasive anti-Semitic harassment in.... More

Judge orders pregnant woman off life-support. FORT WORTH — A Texas judge ruled Friday that a Fort Worth hospital may not keep a brain-dead pregnant woman on life support against her family’s wishes, and ordered doctors to take her off the machines by 5 p.m. on Monday. More

After 20 years, FDA is remaking the nutrition facts on the back of food.... WASHINGTON — After 20 years, the nutrition facts label on the back of food packages is getting a makeover. Knowledge about nutrition has evolved since the early 1990s, and the Food and Drug Administration says the labels need to reflect that..... More

Fear of home seizure causing people to avoid Medicaid coverage. Add this to the scary but improbable things people are hearing could happen because of the new federal health-care law: After you die, the state could come after your house. The concern arises from a long-standing but little-known aspect of.... More

In rural jails, e-cigarettes are a calming vapor. LAFAYETTE, Tenn. — As city governments and schools across the country move to ban or restrict the use of electronic cigarettes, one place increasingly welcomes the devices: the rural county jail. More

Morning after pill may not work in heavy women. LONDON — The European Medicines Agency says it has started a review of emergency contraceptives to see if they work less well in heavy women. In November, French drug maker HRA Pharma announced its morning-after pill Norvelo was less.... More

U.S. companies awaken to threat of global warming. WASHINGTON — Coca-Cola has always been more focused on its economic bottom line than on global warming, but when the company lost a lucrative operating license in India because of a serious water shortage there in 2004, things began to change. More

Besieged Target lays off 475, won't fill 700 jobs. Target Corp. laid off 475 employees Wednesday and said it will not fill 700 open positions as the company struggles with stubbornly sluggish sales and fallout from the massive computer security breach that short-circuited its crucial holiday.... More

Gallup finds modest drop in uninsured rate as new health law takes effect. WASHINGTON — The nation's uninsured rate dropped modestly this month as the major coverage expansion under President Barack Obama's health care law got underway, according to a closely watched survey released Thursday. The Gallup-Healthways.... More

Upward mobility has not declined, study says. The odds of moving up — or down — the income ladder in the United States have not changed appreciably in the last 20 years, according to a large new academic study that contradicts politicians in both parties who have claimed that income.... More

What's in your fish oil supplements? Millions of Americans take fish oil supplements to promote heart and vascular health. But a new analysis suggests that some consumers may not always get what they are paying for.The new research, carried out by a testing company called LabDoor.... More

Virginia won't defend gay marriage ban. RICHMOND, Va. — Following a seismic political shift in Virginia's top elected offices, the new attorney general has concluded that the state's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional and he will no longer defend it in federal lawsuits, his.... More

Target will drop health insurance for its part-time employees. Target Corp. said Tuesday that it will stop offering health insurance to its part-time employees because new online health exchanges offer workers an opportunity to buy coverage. The Minneapolis-based retailer will give each worker $500 to.... More

The health hazards of sitting. We know sitting too much is bad, and most of us intuitively feel a little guilty after a long TV binge. But what exactly goes wrong in our bodies when we park ourselves for nearly eight hours per day, the average for a U.S. adult? Many things,.... More

Food banks anticipate impact of cuts to food stamps. WASHINGTON — Late last year, staff members at the Capital Area Food Bank here began fielding requests for larger deliveries from the dozens of soup kitchens and food pantries that it supplies as more and more people showed up seeking help. More

States cutting weeks of aid to the jobless. RIEGELWOOD, N.C. — After losing her job as a security guard in June, Alnetta McKnight turned to food stamps and unemployment insurance to support herself and her 14-year-old son. But her jobless payments ran out after 20 weeks, and now they.... More

Sexual orientation ruled no basis for exclusion from jury. Gay men and lesbians may not be excluded from juries based on their sexual orientation, the federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled on Tuesday. During jury selection, lawyers are generally permitted to exclude — or strike — a fixed.... More

Study: nearly half of U.S. black men, 38% of white men arrested at least.... NEW YORK — Nearly 50 percent of black men and 40 percent of white men are arrested at least once on non-traffic-related crimes by the time they turn 23, according to a new study. One of the authors of the study published this month in the.... More

Planning to become a first-time home owner? These steps will make it.... If you’re planning in the spring to buy your first house, you already may be feeling a bit overwhelmed about what can often be a complicated and convoluted process. The good news is that you have plenty of time to learn the myriad steps to.... More

High-tech upgrades may let aging boomers live independently in their homes.... As more baby boomers enter retirement, many may see their homes get a high-tech makeover. Their medicine bottles will alert their doctor when they miss a dose. Pressure-sensing floor mats can sense when they have fallen or let caregivers know.... More

Law's expanded Medicaid coverage brings a surge in signups. WELCH, W.Va. — Sharon Mills, a disabled nurse, long depended on other people’s kindness to manage her diabetes. She scrounged free samples from doctors’ offices, signed up for drug company discounts and asked for money from her parents.... More

Parties seize on abortion rights in midterm race. WASHINGTON — When the Republican National Committee gathers for its winter meeting here on Wednesday, the action will start a few hours late to accommodate anyone who wants to stop first at the March for Life, the annual anti-abortion.... More

President doesn't think weed is more serious than alcohol. President Barack Obama said he doesn't think marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol, "in terms of its impact on the individual consumer." "As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very.... More

Have you ever been on a boat and other weird interview questions from tech.... Looking for a new job? Employment review site Glassdoor reported Friday that one in five employees are looking to switch companies this year. If you’re one of those looking for greener pastures, remember that updating your resume isn’t the.... More

Building toward the home of tomorrow. The home of the future — complete with helper bots and automated appliances — has long been the stuff of science fiction. The tech world is determined to make it a reality. Soon, the vision goes, everything from garden products to bathroom.... More

Juveniles facing lifelong terms, despite rulings. JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — In decisions widely hailed as milestones, the United States Supreme Court in 2010 and 2012 acted to curtail the use of mandatory life sentences for juveniles, accepting the argument that children, even those who are.... More

Coming a long way on smoking, with a way to go. Fifty years ago this month, Dr. Luther L. Terry issued the first “Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health,” which cited smoking as a cause of lung cancer in men. The hefty report landed like a bombshell on a complacent public,.... More

Why everyone seems to have cancer. At the beginning of every year, when the government publishes its Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, it’s followed by a lament: We’re losing the war against cancer. Half a century ago, the story goes, a person was far more likely.... More

A sneaky path into Target customers' wallets. It was, in essence, a cybercriminal’s dream. For months, an amorphous group of Eastern European hackers had been poking around the networks of major American retailers, searching for loose portals that would take them deep into corporate.... More

Wealth: Having enough but hungry for more. THREE recent stories got me thinking about a concept that is central to money, wealth and ultimately contentment but that is overlooked this time of year: knowing how much is enough. First, Mathew Martoma, a former portfolio manager at SAC.... More

NYC leaders begin city's left turn with expanded sick pay proposal. New York City’s top elected officials said on Friday that they would greatly expand the reach of a measure mandating paid time off for sick workers, a cherished cause of the national left that had long been resisted by local business leaders. More

Obama to call for significant changes in collection of phone records of U.... President Obama will call Friday for significant changes to the way the National Security Agency collects and uses telephone records of U.S. citizens, moving to transition away from government control of the information and immediately require.... More

Obama lauds pledges to expand college opportunities. WASHINGTON — Mobilized by the Obama administration, and egged on by both the president and the first lady, scores of college presidents, along with corporate and nonprofit leaders, on Thursday promised new initiatives and money toward.... More

List of smoking-related illnesses grows significantly in U.S. report.. WASHINGTON — In a broad review of scientific literature, the nation’s top doctor has concluded that cigarette smoking — long known to cause lung cancer and heart disease — also causes diabetes, colorectal and liver cancers.... More

U.N, says lag in confronting climate woes will be costly. Nations have so dragged their feet in battling climate change that the situation has grown critical and the risk of severe economic disruption is rising, according to a draft United Nations report. Another 15 years of failure to limit carbon.... More

Advocates for workers raise the ire of business. As America’s labor unions have lost members and clout, new types of worker advocacy groups have sprouted nationwide, and they have started to get on businesses’ nerves — protesting low wages at Capital Grille restaurants, for instance,.... More

Can heavier people really be healthier? Scientists call it the obesity paradox, the notion that being overweight or moderately obese lowers the risk of an early death. They have documented the phenomenon in large population studies and in groups of patients with chronic diseases.... More

Public hospitals hope to attract more upscale patients under new health.... Todd Obolsky lives in a studio apartment in Manhattan, drives a leased Toyota Corolla and occasionally splurges on experimental cuisine in the East Village. When the Affordable Care Act allowed him to buy insurance for the first time in years.... More

Seven reasons why Google is the most fascinating company in the world. Just Google it. The word is synonymous with searching the Web. But given the sweeping goals of the company, the word Google might come to mean something else in pop culture. Google made a big move Monday, announcing plans to acquire Nest.... More

Amid focus on lighter cars and fuel efficiency, big performance vehicles.... DETROIT — No sign of economic strife mars the dazzling floors of the North American International Auto Show, where Vice President Biden is expected to lead a contingent of Obama administration officials Wednesday and Thursday in what amounts.... More

Seeking clues to obesity in rare hunger disorder. Lisa Tremblay still recalls in horror the time her daughter Kristin pulled a hot dog crawling with ants from the garbage at a cookout and prepared to swallow it. Kristin has a rare genetic abnormality that gives her an incessant,.... More

What ultra-marathons do to our bodies. Ultra-runners are different from you and me in one simple way: They run more. But a new study of these racers, who compete in events longer than marathons, joins other recent science in finding that they also tend to be older and have some.... More

Feeling mad? New devices can sense your mood, and even tell others. Cognitive psychologist Mary Czerwinski and her boyfriend were having a vigorous argument as they drove to Vancouver, B.C., from Seattle, where she works at Microsoft Research. She can’t remember the subject, but she does recall that suddenly,.... More

Feeling mad? New devices can sense your mood, and even tell others. Cognitive psychologist Mary Czerwinski and her boyfriend were having a vigorous argument as they drove to Vancouver, B.C., from Seattle, where she works at Microsoft Research. She can’t remember the subject, but she does recall that suddenly,.... More

House and Senate negotiators agree on spending bill. WASHINGTON — House and Senate negotiators reached accord on a trillion-dollar spending plan that will finance the government through September, reversing some cuts to military veterans’ pensions that were included in a broader.... More

Older pool of health care enrollees stirs fears on costs. WASHINGTON — People signing up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s federal and state marketplaces tend to be older and potentially less healthy, officials said Monday, a demographic mix that could threaten the law’s.... More

Secretive Apple squirms in gaze of U.S. monitor. Most companies are reluctant to open themselves to outside inspection. Yet Apple is even resisting someone who was appointed by a court to do exactly that, leading to an unusual public feud between the world’s biggest technology company and.... More

Swedish doctors transplant wombs into nine women. STOCKHOLM — Nine women in Sweden have successfully received transplanted wombs donated from relatives and will soon try to become pregnant, the doctor in charge of the pioneering project has revealed. The women were born without a uterus or.... More

West Virginia residents cope with water woes after chemical spill. CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Around the swollen Elk River, now flowing with a chemical that’s hard to pronounce, myriad streams and rivulets tumbled from the hillsides over the weekend, the result of a drenching downpour. Logs and branches floated.... More

As conjugal visits fade, a lifeline to inmates' spouses is lost. PARCHMAN, Miss. — To spend time alone with the man she married four months ago, Ebony Fisher, 25, drives nearly three hours through the flat cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta until she pulls into a gravel lot next to the state’s rural.... More

Where free speech collides with abortion rights. BOSTON — A couple of mornings a week, Eleanor McCullen stakes out a spot outside the Planned Parenthood clinic here and tries to persuade women on their way in to think twice before having an abortion. More

U.S. to recognize 1,300 marriages disputed by Utah. The Obama administration on Friday made the latest contribution to a fast-moving legal battle over same-sex marriage rights as the Justice Department said that the federal government would recognize as lawful the marriages of some 1,300.... More

The next data privacy battle may be waged inside your car. Cars are becoming smarter than ever, with global positioning systems, Internet connections, data recorders and high-definition cameras. Drivers can barely make a left turn, put on their seatbelts or push 80 miles an hour without their actions.... More

Wall Street shock: take a day off, even a Sunday. For the ambitious college graduates who flock to Wall Street, working into the wee hours or even pulling all-nighters is an unwritten expectation of the job. Spending both Saturdays and Sundays at the office is the norm. More

Enrollees at health exchanges face struggle to prove coverage. Paul D. Donahue and his wife, Angela, are among more than a million Americans who have signed up for health coverage through the federal insurance exchange. Mr. Donahue has a card in his wallet from his insurer to prove it. But when he tried to.... More

Jobs data gives hope for benefits extension. WASHINGTON — The surprisingly weak December jobs report might have strengthened Democrats’ hand in the current fight over emergency jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed even as it weakened the party in the larger midterm election.... More

U.S. employers may have finished 2013 with 5th month of solid hiring. Healthy U.S. economic growth in the second half of last year has raised expectations that 2013 ended with a fifth straight month of solid hiring. Economists predict that employers added 196,000 jobs last month, according to a survey by FactSet..... More

Meat industry launches legal assault against new U.S. labeling rules. WASHINGTON – The meat industry launched a legal assault Thursday against the nation’s food labeling laws that, if successful, could significantly limit consumers’ ability to learn the origins of what they eat. The move came in a federal.... More

Is jogging bad for older people? Is there any scientific study to substantiate the claim that older people (over 45) should limit high impact exercises such as jogging, sprinting, etc.? Actually, much of the recent science about high-impact exercise by “older people” like.... More

At issue in two wrenching cases: What to do after the brain dies. In one way, the cases are polar opposites: the parents of Jahi McMath in Oakland, Calif., have fought to keep their daughter connected to a ventilator, while the parents and husband of Marlise Muñoz in Fort Worth, Tex., want desperately to.... More

More U.S. economists see half-full glass. Record exports and the smallest trade deficit in four years. Healthier consumer spending, including the strongest annual increase in automobile sales since 2007, spurred by a booming stock market and an improving housing sector. And a slow but.... More

Farm bill deal could mean about $9 billion in food stamp cuts. Negotiations are almost complete on a long-overdue farm bill that will set new spending levels for the federal food stamp program and add yet another wrinkle to the national debate over income inequality as Congress mulls how to help unemployed.... More

With help of victims from 1849, scientists decode early strain of cholera. Using bits of human intestine stored in a Philadelphia medical museum in 1849, scientists have decoded the genes of an early form of cholera, the deadly diarrheal disease that first swept the globe just a few decades earlier. More

Opinion: How to help college students graduate. AMERICAN students are enrolling in college in record numbers, but they’re also dropping out in droves. Barely half of those who start four-year colleges, and only a third of community college students, graduate. That’s one of the worst.... More

T-Mobile to cover termination fees for new users. In perhaps the most daring move yet, T-Mobile US, the country’s No. 4 carrier, announced on Wednesday that it would cover the termination fees for individuals as well as up to five lines per family for consumers who leave their carrier..... More

Tech attire, more beta than chic. LAS VEGAS — The next computer consumers buy will fit on a wrist or sit atop a nose. At least that is what many tech companies are hoping.At the International CES here this week, more than a dozen tech companies showcased Internet-connected.... More

Senate set to clash over bill extending long-term unemployment benefits. WASHINGTON — The new year looks a lot like the old one in the Senate, with Democrats scratching for votes to pass an agenda they share with President Barack Obama, and Republicans decidedly unenthusiastic about supporting legislation without.... More

When doctors 'google' their patients. I remember when I first looked up a patient on Google. It was my last day on the bone marrow transplant unit, back when I was an intern. As I stood before the patient, taking her history, she told me she had been a painter and suggested I.... More

Justice's halt to gay marriage leaves couples in limbo. SALT LAKE CITY — In a move that cast doubt over the marriages of roughly 1,000 same-sex couples in Utah, the United States Supreme Court on Monday blocked further same-sex marriages there while state officials appeal a decision allowing.... More

Faulty websites confront needy in search of aid. MIAMI — Three months after the disastrous rollout of a new $63 million website for unemployment claims, Florida is hiring hundreds of employees to deal with technical problems that left tens of thousands of people without their checks while.... More

Hundreds spend night on stranded Amtrak trains, more than 1,900 flights.... Hundreds of Amtrak travelers had to spend the night aboard three trains that were stranded in northern Illinois due to the snow, the Associated Press reports: The trains — The Southwest Chief from Los Angeles, the Illinois Zephyr from.... More

Small business: Jobma website connects job-seekers, employers. Mandeep Sodhi’s entrepreneurial success stems from his wide-ranging work history. He’s held corporate jobs, been a consultant and launched ventures including restaurants, a nightclub, a day-care center and commercial property management..... More

Requirement in health law threatens volunteer firefighting system.... FREEPORT, Maine — Fire chiefs and lawmakers are working to protect the system of volunteer firefighting that has served rural America for more than a century but is threatened by an ambiguity in President Barack Obama's health care law. More

Personal journeys: traveling while black. As I walked through the Forbidden City, the majestic imperial palace at the center of Beijing, with a friend and her teenager, I scanned the crowd. In the maze of shrines and courtyards, there was no one quite like us: I am an African-American.... More

With marijuana access on the horizon, patients fear potential restrictions. Nancy Rivera, a cancer survivor, has a bag of pills in her night stand — white, gold and rust, big and little, antidepressants, antiemetics and tranquilizers — given to her by doctors. So it always seemed hypocritical to her that while.... More

An astonishing, dangerous cold snap is about to descend on U.S. For days, it’s appeared on computer model maps in the form of deep blue and purple shades. Now it’s about to get real and up close and personal. Some of the coldest air in years, if not decades, is poised to pour into the U.S., with.... More

Justices are asked to reject nuns' challenge to health law. The Obama administration urged the Supreme Court on Friday to reject a lawsuit filed by the Little Sisters of the Poor,  an order of Roman Catholic nuns challenging requirements for many employers to provide health insurance coverage for birth.... More

Unemployed in Europe stymied by lack of technology skills. DUBLIN — Week after week, newspapers issue a stream of hopeful headlines: Microsoft, PayPal, Fujitsu and scores of other companies are expanding their investments in Ireland, creating thousands of jobs as unemployment hovers near record highs. More

Access to abortion falling as states pass restrictions. A three-year surge in anti-abortion measures in more than half the states has altered the landscape for abortion access, with supporters and opponents agreeing that the new restrictions are shutting some clinics, threatening others, and making.... More

Obama urges Congress to restore benefits to long-term unemployed. President Obama, seeking the upper hand with Congress as he heads back from his Hawaiian vacation, insisted Saturday that lawmakers make restoring unemployment benefits for 1.3 million Americans out of work their “first order of business”.... More

General Mills will stop using genetically modified organisms in Cheerios. General Mills Inc. said it has stopped using genetically modified organisms in its flagship Cheerios breakfast cereal amid growing oppostion to the use of such ingredients. The Minneapolis-based company said in a blog post Thursday night that.... More

Missing a cancer diagnosis. Stories of misdiagnoses circulate throughout the testimonies of people contending with all sorts of cancers. Such errors, made by patients as well as doctors, bring in their wake a sense of betrayal, self-recrimination and anger. Should we.... More

Allowed to join the bar, but not to take a job. LOS ANGELES — As a teenager in Northern California, Sergio Garcia worked in the almond fields and in a grocery store, earning his way through college and then law school. He passed the California bar exam on his first try, something just half.... More

Emergency visits seen increasing with health law. Supporters of President Obama’s health care law had predicted that expanding insurance coverage for the poor would reduce costly emergency room visits because people would go to primary care doctors instead. But a rigorous new experiment in.... More

Doctors, hospitals, expect some confusion as Obamacare starts. (Reuters) - Hospitals and medical practices across the United States braced for confusion and administrative hassles as new insurance plans under President Barack Obama's healthcare law took effect on Wednesday. More

A good year for U.S. firms as deals pick up. What may have been the most auspicious deal of late was not the biggest or the most groundbreaking of mergers. It was just one that took a little gumption. In September, Applied Materials, a California maker of semiconductor manufacturing.... More

In Colorado, marijuana sales for recreational use commence. DENVER — At 8 a.m. New Year’s Day, in an industrial area a few miles from downtown Denver, a former Marine named Sean Azzariti walked into a giant store and bought a bag of weed. Legally. To smoke just for fun, if he’s so inclined..... More

Loan monitor accused of ruthless tactics on student debt. Stacy Jorgensen fought her way through pancreatic cancer. But her struggle was just beginning. Before she became ill, Ms. Jorgensen took out $43,000 in student loans. As her payments piled up along with medical bills, she took the unusual step.... More

Boehner said to embrace changes in immigration. Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio has signaled he may embrace a series of limited changes to the nation’s immigration laws in the coming months, giving advocates for change new hope that 2014 might be the year that a bitterly divided Congress.... More

Shoppers wait for opening of nation's first recreational pot shops in.... DENVER — Firing up bongs and cheering in a cloud of marijuana smoke, pot users in Colorado hailed the arrival of the nation's first recreational pot industry Wednesday.Retail sales weren't to begin until 8 a.m. But marijuana fans didn't wait.... More

World celebrates, ushers in 2014 A world-wide wave of celebrations rang in 2014 with a dazzling 30-minute fireworks show in Dubai, a deluge of confetti in London that tasted as good as it looked and a lavish, boozy, music-filled party throughout the streets of Las Vegas. In.... More

Sotomayor blocks contraception mandate in insurance. Acting at the request of an order of nuns in Colorado, Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Obama administration from forcing some religious-affiliated groups to provide health insurance coverage of birth control or face.... More

Viewing where the Internet goes. When Edward J. Snowden, the disaffected National Security Agency contract employee, purloined tens of thousands of classified documents from computers around the world, his actions — and their still-reverberating consequences — heightened.... More

Millions gaining health coverage under new law. Millions of Americans will begin receiving health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday after years of contention and a rollout hobbled by delays and technical problems. The decisively new moment in the effort to.... More

Despite more gadgets, electricity use in U.S. falling to 2001 levels. NEW YORK — The average amount of electricity consumed in U.S. homes has fallen to levels last seen more than a decade ago, back when the smartest device in people's pockets was a Palm pilot and anyone talking about a tablet was probably an.... More

Budget deal's pension cuts anger veterans. After 25 years of service, including combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, Lt. Col. Stephen Preston retired from the Army and began collecting a pension of nearly $55,000 a year. The money made it possible for Preston to go back to college,.... More

A resisted pill to prevent H.I.V. SAN FRANCISCO — Over a cup of tea at a downtown Starbucks, Michael Rubio recalled how four friends became H.I.V. positive through unprotected sex, all within a year. The news shocked Mr. Rubio, a 28-year-old gay man, into trying a.... More

Total signups for ObamaCare estimated at 2M as December surge propels.... A December surge propelled health care sign-ups through the government's rehabilitated website past the 1 million mark, the Obama administration said Sunday, reflecting new vigor for the problem-plagued federal insurance market. More

Utah judge unexpected as a hero to gay people. DENVER — For a judge who would go on to make same-sex marriage legal in Utah, a deep-red state where streets in the capital are numbered by their distance from the Mormon temple, Robert J. Shelby arrived on the bench with enthusiastic.... More

A.D.H.D. experts revisit study's zeal for drugs. Twenty years ago, more than a dozen leaders in child psychiatry received $11 million from the National Institute of Mental Health to study an important question facing families with children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Is.... More

Democrats turn to minimum wage as 2014 strategy. WASHINGTON — Democratic Party leaders, bruised by months of attacks on the new health care program, have found an issue they believe can lift their fortunes both locally and nationally in 2014: an increase in the minimum wage. The effort.... More

U.S. struggles to keep pace in delivering broadband services. WASHINGTON — San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States, a progressive and economically vibrant metropolis of 1.4 million people sprawled across south-central Texas. But the speed of its Internet service is no match for the.... More

Smartphones become the new house keys. For Raffi Kajberouni, the keys to his Santa Clarita, Calif., home have become relics. If he locks himself out, no problem. If a friend arrives at his two-story house before him, there’s no waiting outside for Kajberouni to arrive. Kajberouni.... More

Amid polarization, two rival Americas. Political polarization has ushered in a new era in state government, where single-party control of the levers of power has produced competing Americas. One is grounded in principles of lean and limited government and on traditional values; the.... More

A second wind from an injured knee. When Kim Gustafson moved to Vail Valley in Colorado more than a decade ago, he was 54 and had recently retired as an executive in the office-equipment business. But he wasn’t ready to stop working. “I’m not the type of person who wanted.... More

Brain-like computers, learning from experience. PALO ALTO, Calif. — Computers have entered the age when they are able to learn from their own mistakes, a development that is about to turn the digital world on its head. The first commercial version of the new kind of computer chip is.... More

Let's hope the hangover is virtual; web parties abound. On Tuesday evening, when Times Square is mobbed, Dr. Maria Evans, a 53-year-old surgical and clinical pathologist, will be having a party in Kirksville, Mo. She has been preparing for it over the last few weeks, inviting friends with a message.... More

Medicare to cover more mental health costs. For decades, older adults with depression, anxiety and other psychological conditions have received unequal treatment under Medicare. The program paid a smaller share of the bill for therapy from psychiatrists, psychologists or clinical social.... More

Denver gives out first licenses to businesses approved to sell.... DENVER — The first batch of Denver businesses approved to sell recreational marijuana got their licenses Friday, the owners mugging for pictures and saying they never thought they'd see the day when they'd get a permit to sell pot. More

Hospitalizations spike as flu season worsens. First came the cold. Now brace your­self for flu. Hospital ad­mis­sions re­lated to the flu vi­rus jumped sharp­ly in Minnesota dur­ing the week be­fore Christ­mas, and now state health of­fi­cials are re­mind­ing those who.... More

Police salaries and pensions push California city to the brink. DESERT HOT SPRINGS, Calif. — Emerging from Los Angeles’s vast eastern sprawl, the freeway glides over a narrow pass and slips gently into the scrubby, palm-flecked Coachella Valley. Turn south, and you head into Palm Springs with its.... More

Benefits ending for one million unemployed. WASHINGTON — An emergency federal program that acts as a lifeline for 1.3 million jobless workers will end on Saturday, drastically curtailing government support for the long-term unemployed and setting the stage for a major political fight.... More

U.S. steps up oversite of hand and face transplants. WASHINGTON — Sure your liver or kidney could save someone's life. But would you donate your hands, or your face? Signing up to become an organ donor may get more complicated than just checking a box on your driver's license. More

Holiday rush at Mexico City's "hangover prison." MEXICO CITY — On the way home from a pre-Christmas fiesta, Mauricio Rodriguez, after “two tequilas,” felt clear-headed and focused, “not dizzy or anything.” So when the IT help desk employee failed one of Mexico City’s feared.... More

Hospice firms draining billions from Medicare. Hospice patients are expected to die: The treatment focuses on providing comfort to the terminally ill, not finding a cure. To enroll a patient, two doctors certify a life expectancy of six months or less. But over the past decade, the number.... More

New York soon to trail Florida in population. ALBANY — New York, whose status as the most populous state has long been ceded, will soon fall behind Florida into fourth place, a long-anticipated drop that is rife with symbolism and that could carry potentially serious economic.... More

Utah ruling means no respite for Supreme Court on same-sex marriage. WASHINGTON — In June, when the Supreme Court stopped short of deciding whether the Constitution guaranteed a right to same-sex marriage, many thought the court had bought itself several years before it had to confront the question again. More

Study suggests knee surgery does very little for some. A popular surgical procedure worked no better than fake operations in helping people with one type of common knee problem, suggesting that thousands of people may be undergoing unnecessary surgery, a new study in The New England Journal of.... More

Getting out of discount game, small colleges lower price. SPARTANBURG, S.C. — A higher education riddle: When can a college slash tuition by almost half, without losing revenues? Answer: When nobody much pays full tuition anyway. More

E.R. costs for mentally ill soar and hospitals seek a better way. As darkness fell on a Friday evening over downtown Raleigh, N.C., Michael Lyons, a paramedic supervisor for Wake County Emergency Medical Services, slowly approached the tall, lanky man who was swaying back and forth in a gentle rhythm. More

Underwater homeowners could face extra tax burden in 2014. Struggling homeowners could be hit with an unexpected tax bill in the new year. A law that spared people who owe more than their homes are worth from being saddled with extra taxes when their banks provide mortgage relief is expiring next week..... More

For the nearly 1.3 million long-term jobless, another step closer to the.... Kathy Biscotti cut back to two meals a day after losing her job over the summer. On Saturday, she must swallow an even more bitter pill: the end of her federal unemployment benefits. An estimated 1.3 million long-term unemployed workers like.... More

Winning veteran's trust, and profiting from it. With every slip and fall, every bruise and ache, the reality set in: Henry Schaffer, 86, could no longer live on his own. So his daughter, Kristi, began searching for a retirement home — and the money to pay for it. More

Utah's battle over gay marriage is sign of a larger shift. A fresh battle over same-sex marriage in conservative Utah, the heart of Mormon country, has offered gay-rights advocates hope that their effort has reached a national tipping point. The judge who struck down the state’s same-sex marriage ban.... More

Babes in a digital toyland: even 3-year-olds get gadgets. The children come day after day, lining up in the cold and snow on Main Street in Midland, Mich., to wait their turn to enter Santa’s house and whisper their Christmas longings to the jolly man in the red suit. “Cellphone.” “IPad.”.... More

Day is added to deadline as rush hits health portal. WASHINGTON — A record-setting crush of last-minute shoppers descended on HealthCare.gov on Monday, creating long wait times for users and putting new stress on the government’s much-maligned health portal as they raced against a midnight.... More

A new focus on depression. When will we ever get depression under control? Of all the major illnesses, mental or physical, depression has been one of the toughest to subdue. Despite the ubiquity of antidepressant drugs — there are now 26 to choose from — only a.... More

Do nuts really help you lose weight? A peculiar experiment is taking place at Purdue University, one that might determine how nutty our brains can be. Researchers are collecting stacks of brain scans with crystal-clear views inside the minds of their test subjects — while.... More

U.S. credit and debit cards use easy-to-replicate magnetic strip; rest of.... NEW YORK — The U.S. is the juiciest target for hackers hunting credit card information. And experts say incidents like the recent data theft at Target's stores will get worse before they get better. That's in part because U.S. credit and.... More

Subtract teachers, add pupils: math of today's jammed schools. COATESVILLE, Pa. — The recession may have ended, but many of the nation’s school districts that laid off teachers and other employees to cut payrolls in leaner times have not yet replenished their ranks. Now, despite the recovery, many.... More

On jammed jets, sardines turn on one another. Flying coach can be a bruising experience these days. With air travelers increasingly feeling like packed sardines, flying has become a contact sport, nowhere more than over the reclined seat. Now, it is only getting worse, as airlines.... More

Amid steady deportation, fear and worry multiply among immigrants. NEW ORLEANS — Karen Sandoval’s promising life in this city fell apart in one day last summer when she went to buy school supplies for her two daughters. Ms. Sandoval, a Honduran immigrant here illegally, was riding with the man her girls.... More

Listening to the elderly cuts use of costly medications. An experiment that began four years ago in Two Harbors, Minn., is winning praise from federal and state authorities as a breakthrough in reducing the use of antipsychotic medications among elderly nursing home clients, improving patient care.... More

BlackBerry hits the reset button on its core business. BlackBerry is finally hitting the restart button. After reporting a $4.4 billion third-quarter loss Friday, the smartphone maker said it will focus on developing software and offload much of its hardware production on the technology industry.... More

Federal judge rules same-sex marriage is legal in Utah. Salt Lake County began issuing marriage licenses to jubilant same-sex couples on Friday, hours after a federal judge ruled that Utah’s amendment barring same-sex marriage violated the United States Constitution. The decision, by Judge.... More

Health law frustrates many in middle class. Ginger Chapman and her husband, Doug, are sitting on the health care cliff. The cheapest insurance plan they can find through the new federal marketplace in New Hampshire will cost their family of four about $1,000 a month, 12 percent of their.... More

Is creativity destined to fade as we grow older?   Doris Lessing, the freewheeling Nobel Prize-winning writer on racism, colonialism, feminism and communism who died last month at age 94, was prolific for most of her life. But five years ago, she said the writing had dried up..... More

What does parenting feel like when the grownups don't like to play?e ecreation supervisor for the city of Bellingham, Wash., yet when it came time to raise children, there were certain things she just didn't love to play. "When we played Monopoly we were the worst. We actually applauded each other if you could.... More

It's the economy: supersize my wage. About 20 years ago, in the midst of a recession, New Jersey decided to boost its minimum wage to $5.05 an hour from $4.25. Its neighbor to the west, Pennsylvania, chose not to tinker with its wage floor. Two bright young economists at Princeton.... More

Glaxo says it will stop paying doctors to promote drugs. The British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline will no longer pay doctors to promote its products and will stop tying compensation of sales representatives to the number of prescriptions doctors write, its chief executive said Monday, effectively.... More

Budget deal heads for Senate approval as more Republicans give support. WASHINGTON — Support for a compromise two-year budget deal grew ahead of a Tuesday vote in the Senate as Republicans concluded they could not allow a measure that passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support to die in Congress’s.... More

FDA raises safety concerns on antibacterial soap. WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration says there is no evidence that antibacterial chemicals used in liquid soaps and washes help prevent the spread of germs, and there is some evidence they may pose health risks. The agency said it.... More

Independent bookstores turn a new page on brick-and-mortar retailing. Bookstores are terminally ill. Borders? Dead. Barnes & Noble? Life support. Amazon is king. E-books are the present and the future. Have tablet, will read. But in downtown Frederick, Md., Marlene and Tom England are defying the future: They.... More

Companies turn again to stock buybacks to reward shareholders. Battered by months of dis­appointing sales, networking giant Cisco needed a way to give its shareholders a pick-me-up. So the San Jose-based firm did what has become routine for many big U.S. companies in a slow-growing economy: It announced.... More

The Well: Music and the young brain. Many experts and parents believe that exposing preschoolers to music “makes them smarter” — that is, gives them an advantage in cognitive development in other areas. But two new randomized trials have found no evidence for the belief. In.... More

More retailers see haggling as a price of doing business. Pay no attention to the price on that tag. Or even the markdown. This year some shoppers are quietly taking the art of bargaining up the escalator to the floors selling cashmere or over-the-knee leather boots, building on the haggling skills.... More

New drug-testing method shows promise for speeding new breast cancer.... SAN ANTONIO — A novel way to speed the testing of cancer drugs and quickly separate winners from duds has yielded its first big result: an experimental medicine that shows promise against a hard-to-treat form of breast cancer. The method.... More

Three years in, co-parenting court claims success. When Anthony Spears walked into a Hennepin County courtroom with the mother of his infant daughter, he expected to be legally recognized as the father and to be told how much child support to pay each month. Instead, the two were steered to.... More

If you're planning to buy a home next year, get ready for some new rules. If you’re planning to buy a house next year — and unless you’re in a position to make an all-cash offer — chances are you’ll be affected by some significant changes occurring in the mortgage application process beginning in January..... More

An alternative to giving up the car keys for older drivers. Robert Cullon, 80, has a neurological condition that makes his feet numb and forces him to rely on a walker. He thought he was driving just fine, but his six children were worried. “They kept saying, ‘Are you sure you’re doing all.... More

In 2 states, corner cannabis stores near reality. DENVER — Starting early next year, any adult with a craving or curiosity will be able to stroll into a strip mall or downtown shop in Colorado or Washington State and do what has long been forbidden: buy a zip-lock bag of legal marijuana. More

U.S. considers cellphones on flights, but no calls. The federal government on Thursday moved closer to allowing cellphone use during flights, but with a catch: Passengers won’t be able to use the devices to make calls. If approved, the new rules would mean consumers could use their data plans.... More

Top students at community colleges to have a chance to raise ambitions. A disparate group of colleges from across the country — public and private, two-year and four-year — plans to announce a novel alliance on Friday aimed at producing high-achieving community college graduates and making it easier for them to.... More

Schools use Web tools, and data is seen at risk. Public schools around the country are adopting web-based services that collect and analyze personal details about students without adequately safeguarding the information from potential misuse by service providers, according to new research. More

Health plans urged to extend enrollment. With many Americans still foiled in their efforts to buy insurance under the new health care law, the Obama administration moved Thursday to give them more time to sign up and pay premiums, and it extended a program for people with cancer,.... More

In food cravings, sugar trumps fat. What makes a milkshake so irresistible? Is it the sweet flavor that our taste buds are after? Or the smooth and creamy texture? Or perhaps it is the copious blend of fat and sugar? An intriguing new study suggests that what really draws people.... More

How sequester cuts divided winners from losers - including Head Start.... OWENSBORO, Ky. — How, exactly, did Congress manage to kick 4-year-old Carli Hopkins out of her preschool? Carli asked after it happened. Her mother didn’t try to explain. The child was still too young to learn about politicians. “Some.... More

House Republicans appear to be rallying behind $85 billion budget deal. House Republicans appeared Wednesday to be rallying around an $85 billion deal to avert ­another government shutdown, brushing off complaints from their right wing that the effort would trade immediate spending cuts for less-certain.... More

Federal safety regulators shut 52 bus companies. LOS ANGELES — Federal bus safety regulators have shut down 52 companies in what they describe as a major nationwide crackdown on unsafe outfits, including lines whose drivers had suspended licenses or worked routes of more than 800 miles.... More

F.D.A. restricts antibiotic use for livestock. WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday put in place a major new policy to phase out the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in cows, pigs and chickens raised for meat, a practice that experts say has endangered human health.... More

U.S. colleges finding ideals tested abroad. WELLESLEY, Mass. — Members of the Wellesley College faculty reacted strongly when word spread that Peking University might fire Prof. Xia Yeliang, a critic of the Chinese government. Professor Xia, an economist, had visited Wellesley over.... More

Baby's first tech toys trouble experts. A newborn baby cannot hold or even swipe at an iPad, but Fisher-Price is providing a way to keep infants glued to the device. The Newborn-to-Toddler Apptivity Seat for the iPad allows parents to strap a baby to the reclining bouncy chair and.... More

Men with pelvic pain find path to treatment blocked by a gynecology board. After visiting dozens of doctors and suffering for nearly five years from pelvic pain so severe that he could not work, Daniel Davidson, 57, a dentist in Dalton Gardens, Idaho, finally found a specialist in Phoenix who had an outstanding.... More

New GM chief is company woman, born to it. DETROIT — Her father was a die maker for 39 years, one of the legions of employees who performed the gritty tasks that made General Motors the nation’s largest and most powerful auto company. And ever since she was a child, Mary T. Barra.... More

After setbacks, online courses are rethought. Two years after a Stanford professor drew 160,000 students from around the globe to a free online course on artificial intelligence, starting what was widely viewed as a revolution in higher education, early results for such large-scale courses.... More

Sebelius to testify, as U.S. cites rise in healthcare signups. WASHINGTON — The number of people selecting health insurance plans in the federal and state marketplaces increased in November at a brisk pace, bringing the total to date to nearly 365,000, or more than triple the number who signed up in.... More

Study: U.S. poverty rate has decreased, thanks to safety-net programs. Government programs such as food stamps and unemployment insurance have made significant progress in easing the plight of the poor in the half-century since the launch of the war on poverty, according to a major new study. But the nation’s.... More

AIDS advocates say some insurance coverage is inadequate. The nation’s new health-care law says insurers can’t turn anyone away, even people who are sick. But some companies, patient advocates say, have found a way to discourage the chronically ill from enrolling in their plans: offer drug.... More

If a story is viral, truth may be taking a beating. Truth has never been an essential ingredient of viral content on the Internet. But in the stepped-up competition for readers, digital news sites are increasingly blurring the line between fact and fiction, and saying that it is all part of.... More

Vitamin's old, old edge. In 1602, a Spanish fleet was sailing up the Pacific coast of Mexico when the crew became deathly ill. “The first symptom is pain in the whole body that makes it sensitive to touch,” wrote Antonio de la Ascensión, a priest on the.... More

Health care exchange is vastly improved, users say. MIAMI — After two months of false starts, error messages and pleas for patience from the once-hobbled federal online health care exchange, Karen Egozi, the chief executive of the Epilepsy Foundation of Florida, watched on Monday as counselors.... More

Eight tech giants issue call for limits on government surveillance of.... Eight prominent technology companies, bruised by revelations of government spying on their customers’ data and scrambling to repair the damage to their reputations, are mounting a public campaign to urge President Obama and Congress to set.... More

Amid uproar over health law, voices of quiet optimism and relief. Since his chronic leukemia was diagnosed in 2010, Ray Acosta has paid dearly for health insurance: more than $800 a month in premiums, plus steep co-payments for the drug that helps keep him alive. More

Why do doctors choose a $2,000 drug when one is available for $50? The two drugs have been declared equivalently miraculous. Tested side by side in six major trials, both prevent blindness in a common old-age affliction. Biologically, they are cousins. They’re even made by the same company. But one holds a.... More

Winter storms grip U.S., knocking out power and grounding flights. A deadly winter storm caused power failures and flight cancellations in Dallas on Saturday, while sleet and freezing rain were forecast for much of the Tennessee Valley and the mid-Atlantic on Sunday. More

Enhanced medical care for an annual fee. On a recent morning, Edward S. Goldberg, an unusually affable internist who bears the look of a scholarly Robert De Niro, sat in his office on the Upper East Side and described the realities of practicing general medicine in the Manhattan of.... More

Wall Street mothers, stay-at-home fathers. Marielle Jan de Beur often catches the 6:27 a.m. train to Grand Central Terminal, waiting on the Westchester platform with a swarm of dark-suited men, and then walks 10 blocks to a Park Avenue office fronted by the fountain where Audrey.... More

Meningitis outbreak strikes two universities. Outbreaks of bacterial meningitis have struck two college campuses, though health officials say the episodes — one on the East Coast, the other on the West Coast — are apparently unrelated. Since mid-November, four students at.... More

Meningitis outbreak strikes two universities. Outbreaks of bacterial meningitis have struck two college campuses, though health officials say the episodes — one on the East Coast, the other on the West Coast — are apparently unrelated. Since mid-November, four students at.... More

Families see Colorado as new frontier on medical marijuana. FOUNTAIN, Colo. — As their children cooed from wheelchairs and rocked softly in their arms, the marijuana migrants of Colorado clasped hands, bowed their heads and said a prayer of cautious thanks. More

Endurance, exercise and life span. Is life expectancy affected if you do “extreme” exercise like ultra-marathons, iron-man races, etc? “The short answer is, we don’t know,” said Dr. James O’Keefe, the director of preventive cardiology at Mid-American Heart Institute.... More

U.S. economy adds 203,000 jobs as unemployment falls to 5-year low. The jobs picture brightened in November as hiring was stronger than expected and the unemployment rate fell to a 5-year low, data that increases the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will begin easing its stimulus efforts sooner, rather than.... More

In Minnesota, health insurance applications double as state works to fix.... After two months of failure and hours of help from her broker, Toni Byard navigated Minnesota’s glitchy health insurance website, MNsure, and bought coverage on Tuesday. “So much frustration!” the 63-year-old from Blaine. said “I just.... More

Does boosting the minimum wage cost jobs? “We all know the arguments that have been used against a higher minimum wage.  Some say it actually hurts low-wage workers — businesses will be less likely to hire them.  But there’s no solid evidence that a higher minimum wage costs.... More

Internet firms step up efforts to stop spying. SAN FRANCISCO — When Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s chief executive, recently announced the company’s biggest security overhaul in more than a decade, she did not exactly receive a standing ovation. Ordinary users asked Ms. Mayer why Yahoo was.... More

U.S. growth faster than estimated as businesses stock up. The economy expanded much faster than first thought in the third quarter, as the government on Thursday revised its estimate of growth in the period to a 3.6 percent annual rate from 2.8 percent. More

The face of AIDS is rapidly becoming poor black and Hispanic men. The AIDS epidemic in America is rapidly becoming concentrated among poor, young black and Hispanic men who have sex with men. espite years of progress in preventing and treating H.I.V. in the middle class, the number of new infections.... More

Why are girls more prone to concussions than boys? With attention on concussions largely focused on professional football and men’s sports, these brain injuries may get overlooked in women’s sports. Concussion experts agree that while football still sees the most concussions, every sport.... More

House votes to renew prohibition on all-plastic guns. With the advent of 3-D printers capable of producing plastic weapons, the House voted Tuesday to renew a 25-year-old prohibition against firearms that can evade metal detectors and X-ray machines. A bipartisan bill extending the Undetectable.... More

U.S. private sector adds 215,000 jobs in November. U.S. private employers added 215,000 jobs in November, topping economists' expectations, a report by a payrolls processor showed on Wednesday. Economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast the ADP National Employment Report would show a gain of.... More

Why a brisk walk is better for your health. Walking, fast or slow, is wonderful exercise. But now a first-of-its-kind study shows that to get the most health benefits from walking, many of us need to pick up the pace. The findings stem from a new analysis of the National Walkers’.... More

Google puts money on robots, using the man behind Android. In an out-of-the-way Google office, two life-size humanoid robots hang suspended in a corner. If Amazon can imagine delivering books by drones, is it too much to think that Google might be planning to one day have one of the robots hop off an.... More

Device use expands through adaptation, innovation The Mayo Clinic's Dr. Richard Marsh helps control brain seizures in epileptic patients with a fiber-optic laser first introduced to treat prostate tumors. At the University of Minnesota, Dr. Ganesh Raveendran has figured out how to treat young.... More

Inside the race to rescue the health care site, and Obama. WASHINGTON — As a small coterie of grim-faced advisers shuffled into the Oval Office on the evening of Oct. 15, President Obama’s chief domestic accomplishment was falling apart 24 miles away, at a bustling high-tech data center in suburban.... More

Life on $7.25 an hour. Older workers are increasingly entering the fast food industry. On a recent Friday evening, Eduardo Shoy left work at 6 p.m. Mr. Shoy, a deliveryman for KFC and Pizza Hut, was coming off an eight-hour shift of driving three-cheese pies and.... More

All dogs may go to heaven; some go to hospice. More and more, cats and dogs get the human treatment. There are pet spas, pet therapists, pet clothes. And as it goes in life, so it now goes in the twilight. The latest phenomenon: pet hospice. Around the country, a growing number of.... More

Shop first, and eat later. Before most Thanksgiving turkeys even approached the oven on Thursday, a small line of tents had formed in front of a Best Buy in Falls Church, Va., their inhabitants waiting for the holiday deals to begin. First in line was William Ignacio,.... More

Once for women only, college adds men's teams after 104 years. LAKEWOOD, N.J. — Luka Zgonjanin arrived in the United States from Serbia in August, barely able to speak English. He had accepted a scholarship to play basketball at Georgian Court, a small liberal arts university on the outskirts of the.... More

On register's other side, little to spend. In many stores around the country, the workers stocking the shelves and ringing up the gifts are at the very heart of this season’s retail lament —many Americans are so financially strapped that projections for holiday sales have grown.... More

Study suggests whooping cough shot curbs illness, not spread. ATLANTA — A government study offers a new theory on why the whooping cough vaccine doesn't seem to be working as well as expected. The research suggests that while the vaccine may keep people from getting sick, it doesn't prevent them from.... More

Many children orphaned by Philippines typhoon. TACLOBAN, Philippines — The teenager with unruly hair in a ponytail wipes tears from her eyes as she holds her feverish 3-year-old brother, who clings to her and lets out a sob of his own now and then. They have been inseparable ever since.... More

Many children orphaned by Philippines typhoon. TACLOBAN, Philippines — The teenager with unruly hair in a ponytail wipes tears from her eyes as she holds her feverish 3-year-old brother, who clings to her and lets out a sob of his own now and then. They have been inseparable ever since.... More

Holidays bring families together . . . for tech support. The trip to Mom and Dad’s to celebrate Thanksgiving comes with turkey, pumpkin pie and a chance to watch football on that fancy new flat-screen TV — after you program the universal remote control, that is. Across Minnesota, college kids and.... More

Hospital studies link heart device to clots. Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic began to suspect in 2012 that something might be wrong with a high-tech implant used to treat patients with advanced heart failure like former Vice President Dick Cheney. The number of patients developing.... More

In Kentucky, health-care debate takes back seat as long-uninsured line up. At the White House, President Obama was still apologizing for the botched federal Web site. In a state where the rollout has gone smoothly, and in a county that is one of the poorest and unhealthiest in the country, Courtney Lively has been.... More

Backlash by the bay: tech riches alter a city. SAN FRANCISCO — If there was a tipping point, a moment that crystallized the anger building here toward the so-called technorati for driving up housing prices and threatening the city’s bohemian identity, it came in response to a diatribe.... More

Anti-viral drugs curb child flu deaths, but fall in use. The flu can lead to serious complications, even death, in children, but relatively few studies have assessed the effectiveness of antiviral treatments in young patients hospitalized with the infection. Now a large study, published Monday in the.... More

Court confronts religious rights of corporations WASHINGTON — Hobby Lobby, a chain of crafts stores, closes on Sundays, costing its owners millions but honoring their Christian faith. The stores play religious music. Employees get free spiritual counseling. But they do not get free.... More

Sex, Violence and R ratings. A new study reports that gun violence in PG-13 movies now exceeds that in most R-rated films. Meanwhile, a love story that follows two young people in a relationship has been given an NC-17 rating, discouraging much of the demographic its two.... More

Service members left vulnerable to payday loans. Petty Officer First Class Vernaye Kelly winces when roughly $350 is automatically deducted from her Navy paycheck twice a month. Month after month, the money goes to cover payments on loans with annual interest rates of nearly 40 percent. The.... More

Health care law opens rift among governors SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Republicans are planning to use the troubled health law against Democrats in next year’s midterm elections, but the Affordable Care Act is increasingly dividing their party, too. At the annual meeting here of the.... More

A talk that stirred fears of antigay bias is postponed at Bronx high.... Ever since Pope Francis spoke compassionately about gay people last summer — saying, “Who am I to judge?” — Roman Catholics around the world have debated the meaning of his words. That debate continued this week at Cardinal Spellman.... More

Perks ease way in health plans for lawmakers. Members of Congress like to boast that they will have the same health care enrollment experience as constituents struggling with the balky federal website, because the law they wrote forced lawmakers to get coverage from the new insurance.... More

Perks ease way in health plans for lawmakers. Members of Congress like to boast that they will have the same health care enrollment experience as constituents struggling with the balky federal website, because the law they wrote forced lawmakers to get coverage from the new insurance.... More

Mother's exercise may boost baby's brain. If a woman is physically active during pregnancy, she may boost the development of her unborn child’s brain, according to a heart-tugging new study of expectant mothers and their newborns. The findings bolster a growing scientific consensus.... More

Safer cities? Tell this neighborhood. ST. LOUIS — The unmistakable pop of a gunshot ricocheted through the park in the humid air, and Montez Wayne could only hope that the bullet did not have his name on it. He sprang from his seat beneath a sprawling bald cypress, ready to make.... More

Governors: How we got Obamacare to work in our states. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, is governor of Washington. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, is governor of Kentucky. Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat, is governor of Connecticut. In our states — Washington, Kentucky and Connecticut — the Affordable Care.... More

Tornadoes, powerful storms, kill 6 and level homes across Illinois, then.... WASHINGTON, Ill. — As a powerful tornado bore down on their Illinois farmhouse, Curt Zehr’s wife and adult son didn’t have time to do anything but scramble down the stairs into their basement. Uninjured, the pair looked out moments later.... More

New risk calculator for cholesterol appears flawed. Last week, the nation’s leading heart organizations released a sweeping new set of guidelines for lowering cholesterol, along with an online calculator meant to help doctors assess risks and treatment options. But, in a major embarrassment.... More

Dispute over gay marriage disrupts in Cheney family. WASHINGTON — They were the towheaded sisters who tagged along on campaigns, polite and smiling, as their father rose through Wyoming and then Washington politics to become one of the most powerful men in the country. “We were as close as.... More

Duncan: 'White suburban moms' upset that Common Core shows their kids.... U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of a.... More

A computer academy in France defies conventional wisdom. PARIS — In a nation of schools typically christened with sensible acronyms or the names of dead Frenchmen, 42 seems an odd title for an institution of higher learning. But then, Xavier Niel’s new technology academy hardly aims to be.... More

Addiction treatment with a dark side. For Shawn Schneider, a carpenter and rock musician, the descent into addiction began one Wisconsin winter with a fall from a rooftop construction site onto the frozen ground below. As the potent pain pills prescribed for his injuries became his.... More

Caught in unemployment's revolving door. On a cold October morning, just after the federal government shutdown came to an end, Jenner Barrington-Ward headed into court in Boston to declare bankruptcy. It took weeks to put the paperwork together, given that her papers and belongings.... More

Alzheimer's anxiety. PHILADELPHIA — ALMOST every day I worry about whether my parents have Alzheimer’s. My dad is 86 and my mother is about to turn 80. Just because of their age they are at high risk for the disease, and I constantly wonder if their.... More

United Health invests $50 million in low-income housing. UnitedHealth Group Inc. said Thursday that it is putting $50 million into a fund to construct hundreds of low-income housing units in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest. While the investment brings financial benefits, officials at the nation’s.... More

E-cigarettes gain attention in schools amid rise in popularity. When a teacher noticed what looked like smoke rising in her Eastern Middle School classroom one day this fall, she quickly investigated, finding an eighth-grade boy holding an e-cigarette. The “smoke” was vapor, but for Casey B. Crouse,.... More

Ravaged by typhoon, Philippines faces threat of serious diseases. The aftermath of the Philippines typhoon is now threatening the country with outbreaks of debilitating and potentially fatal diseases, including some thought to have been nearly eradicated, because of a collapse in sanitation, shortages of.... More

China to ease one-child policy. HONG KONG — The Chinese government will ease its one-child family size restrictions and abolish re-education through labor camps, significantly curtailing two policies that for decades have defined the state’s power to control citizens’.... More

Obama moves to avert cancellation of insurance. President Obama, trying to quell a growing furor over the rollout of his health care law, bowed to bipartisan pressure on Thursday and announced a policy reversal that would allow insurance companies to temporarily keep people on health plans.... More

Boeing workers reject labor deal in Washington State. Members of a union representing thousands of Boeing employees voted late Wednesday to reject a controversial labor deal that would have cut compensation but have kept assembly of the company’s new 777X jets in Washington State, raising the.... More

In a Phillipine hospital, survivors face quiet despair. TACLOBAN, the Philippines — Richard Pulga, a 27-year-old farmer with thick black hair and a gentle manner, has been lying on a hard steel bed in a dark hallway of the main hospital here since Saturday with a shattered lower right leg,.... More

Car mechanic dreams up tool to ease childbirth. The idea came to Jorge Odón as he slept. Somehow, he said, his unconscious made the leap from a YouTube video he had just seen on extracting a lost cork from a wine bottle to the realization that the same parlor trick could save a baby stuck.... More

Obama expected to sign bill aimed at helping kids with food allergies. WASHINGTON — The deaths of two girls in Illinois and Virginia from severe food allergies have helped spur efforts to get schools to stockpile emergency medications that can save lives. That effort has now reached the highest level: President.... More

Rethinking the rise of inequality: is college really key to prosperity? Many Americans have come to doubt the proposition that college delivers a path to prosperity. In a poll conducted last month by the College Board and National Journal, 46 percent of respondents — including more than half of 18- to.... More

Some state health exchanges still face technical problems. Six weeks into the rollout of President Obama’s new health care law, some of the online insurance exchanges run by states are continuing to have serious technological problems, often mirroring the issues plaguing the much larger federal.... More

New guidelines could have far more Americans taking cholesterol drugs. Millions more Americans could end up taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs under new recommendations released Tuesday that advocate a dramatic shift in the way doctors assess and treat cardiovascular risk. Roughly a quarter of Americans.... More

Troubled Healthcare.gov unlikely to work fully by end of November. Software problems with the federal online health insurance marketplace, especially in handling high volumes, are proving so stubborn that the system is unlikely to work fully by the end of the month as the White House has promised, according to.... More

About 40,000 have signed up for plans on healthcare.gov. Roughly 40,000 Americans have signed up for private insurance through the flawed federalonline insurance marketplace since it opened six weeks ago, according to two people with access to the figures. That amount is a tiny fraction of the.... More

In Phillipines, a struggle to reach typhoon victims. CEBU, Philippines — Hundreds of Filipinos gathered at Mactan Air Base on Tuesday, hoping for a chance to board a C-130 transport plane carrying relief supplies to the city of Tacloban, one of the areas worst-hit by Typhoon Haiyan. More

Michelle Obama edges into policy role in higher education. Michelle Obama, after nearly five years of evangelizing exercise and good eating habits, will begin a new initiative on Tuesday that seeks to increase the number of low-income students who pursue a college degree. The goals of the program.... More

Buying cheaper drugs online. Is it safe to order prescription drugs from online pharmacies in Canada? Though technically illegal, millions of Americans do so to save money. But the practice can be a huge gamble. A review of sources has found many sold fake or unapproved.... More

Insurers press for way around healthcare.gov. Some major health insurers are so worried about the Obama administration’s ability to fix its troubled health care website that they are pushing the government to create a shortcut that would allow them to enroll people entitled to subsidies.... More

Amazon to deliver on Sundays, using Postal Service fleet. The Internet has been blamed for the death of the mail, but now it’s offering hope to the beleaguered U.S. Postal Service. Amazon announced Monday that it will begin Sunday deliveries using the government agency’s fleet of foot soldiers,.... More

Health website tests a tycoon and a tinkerer. WASHINGTON — Jeffrey D. Zients, a multimillionaire entrepreneur and management consultant, joined the Obama White House in 2009 with a mandate to streamline the federal bureaucracy. A year later, he issued a prescient warning. The government.... More

Health website tests a tycoon and a tinkerer. WASHINGTON — Jeffrey D. Zients, a multimillionaire entrepreneur and management consultant, joined the Obama White House in 2009 with a mandate to streamline the federal bureaucracy. A year later, he issued a prescient warning. More

South Florida faces ominous prospects from rising waters. MIAMI BEACH — In the most dire predictions, South Florida’s delicate barrier islands, coastal communities and captivating subtropical beaches will be lost to the rising waters in as few as 100 years. Further inland, the Everglades, the.... More

Talk of penalty is missing in ads for health care. New York’s health exchange slogan is “Today’s the Day.” Minnesota has enlisted Paul Bunyan. Oregon held a music contest, and California stresses the “peace of mind” that will come with insurance. The state and federal health.... More

A father tries to end the fat talk. Recently, I was changing my 2-year-old son’s diaper and I happened to be shirtless. In the middle of the change, I caught a glimpse of my body in the mirror. Disturbed by what I’ve always perceived as a less-than-impressive physique, I.... More

Job growth eases fears about effect of shutdown. Despite dysfunction in Washington and a 16-day government shutdown, the economy chugged along in October, surprising many analysts as private sector hiring bounced back after a spring slowdown. The latest figures lifted the estimated monthly.... More

Standing up for the rights of new fathers. Josh Levs, father of a new baby girl, emerged from his sleep-deprived stupor last month to take a stand: He is challenging his employer’s parental leave policy on the grounds that it discriminates against biological dads. This was his third.... More

Gay marriage battle nears end in Hawaii, the first front line. HONOLULU — When, as most everyone expects, Gov. Neil Abercrombie signs into law same-sex marriage here in the coming days, it may almost seem like a routine event. Hawaii is poised to be among 16 states to approve gay marriage, along with.... More

Cuts in hospital subsidies threaten safety-net care. SAVANNAH, Ga. — The uninsured pour into Memorial Health hospital here: the waitress with cancer in her voice box who for two years assumed she just had a sore throat. The unemployed diabetic with a wound stretching the length of her shin. The.... More

President Obama apologizes to those who are losing their health insurance. President Obama apologized Thursday to Americans who are losing their health insurance despite his repeated promises that they wouldn’t, an unusual act of contrition for a president who has come under heavy criticism for misleading the.... More

When nest emptied, discontent entered. When their last child left for college, Arlene Petty, now 64, felt resentment about her decades-long marriage to Ed Petty, also now 64. Facing an empty nest, she asked for a trial separation. In hindsight, both would have done things very.... More

Rules to require equal coverage for mental illness. WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday will complete a generation-long effort to require insurers to cover care formental health and addiction just like physical illnesses when it issues long-awaited regulations defining parity in.... More

Cut in food stamps force hard choices on poor. CHARLESTON, S.C. — For many, a $10 or $20 cut in the monthly food budget would be absorbed with little notice. But for millions of poor Americans who rely on food stamps, reductions that began this month present awful choices. One gallon of.... More

U.S. unemployment rate rises to 7.3%; 204,000 jobs added. The American government shutdown was barely evident in the October jobs report Friday, as temporarily furloughed federal workers lifted the unemployment rate slightly while private employers added positions at a robust pace. More

Senate okays gay rights bill, banning discrimination. The Senate on Thursday approved a ban on discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation and gender identity, voting 64 to 32 in a bipartisan show of support that is rare for any social issue. It was the first time in the.... More

Health law clock is ticking for seriously ill patients. PORTLAND, Ore. — With federal and state online health care marketplaces experiencing glitches a month into implementation, concern is mounting for a vulnerable group of people who were supposed to be among the health law's earliest.... More

Eye contact in infants seen as earliest sign of autism. Scientists are reporting the earliest behavioral sign to date that a child is likely to develop autism: when and how long a baby looks at other people’s eyes. In a study published Wednesday, researchers using eye-tracking technology found.... More

Reports of military sexual assault rise sharply. WASHINGTON — Reports of sexual assault in the military increased sharply during the last fiscal year, new Pentagon figures showed Wednesday, just weeks before a defense bill with provisions to tackle the problem is expected to reach the.... More

U.S. grew at unexpectedly fast rate in third quarter. The American economy grew at an annual rate of 2.8 percent in the third quarter, significantly better than economists had expected and the fastest pace this year. The Commerce Department report had originally been scheduled to come out on Oct..... More

FDA moves to ban trans fats, citing health concerns. The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday proposed measures that would all but eliminate artificial trans fats, the artery clogging substance that is a major contributor to heart disease in the United States, from the food supply. More

Study finds a woman's success may be bad for male partner's ego. Does a woman’s success damage the ego of her male partner? Perhaps we’d like to think we’ve evolved beyond that, but a recent study suggests otherwise. In fact, in the study, a woman’s success made her partner feel worse about himself.... More

Supreme Court takes up Steelworkers' bid for time to put on work gear. The Supreme Court, which ordinarily confronts complicated questions, heard arguments on Monday about what might seem like a simple one: What does it mean to change clothes? But the arguments quickly became tangled, as lawyers and justices.... More

After Los Angeles airport shooting, no easy answers on security strategies. WASHINGTON — When Stephen L. Holl, the chief of police at the Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority, gathered his staff for the regular morning meeting on Monday, he opened with a sobering assessment. “It wasn’t our turn this time.... More

Bill advances to outlaw discrimination against gays. WASHINGTON — A measure that would outlaw workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity overcame a significant obstacle in the Senate on Monday as seven Republicans crossed party lines and voted to begin debate on.... More

For uninsured, clearing the way for enrollment. LA GRANGE, Ky. — Kelli Cauley’s fingers raced over her keyboard as she asked the anxious woman at her side a series of questions. What was her income? How many people lived in her household? Did she smoke? (“That’s the only health.... More

New heart device could reverse heart damage in some patients. Though U.S. clinical trials are just starting, doctors and analysts are already intrigued. The new C-Pulse by Sunshine Heart, Inc. rhythmically squeezes the aorta to take strain off the heart and helps it pump more efficiently. Piper Jaffray.... More

Skydiver recounts miracle at 12,000 feet after midair collision. Mike Robinson was on the step outside the plane, 12,000 feet above ground, just seconds from making the 937th sky dive of his career, his final jump of the day. Then came “that terribly loud bang,” he recalled Sunday. The wing and its.... More

Looking for intimacy in the age of Facebook. IT WAS the only time I have ever allowed college students to have their cellphones out during class, in their hands no less. “I want you to send a text to a friend,” I told students in my course, “The Search for Intimacy in the Age of.... More

Colorado asks taxpayers for $1 billion to help schools. In one poor school district in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, students take classes in a bus garage, using plastic sheeting to keep the diesel fumes at bay. In another, there is no more money to tutor young immigrants struggling to read. And.... More

Under Health Care Act, millions eligible for free policies. Millions of people could qualify for federal subsidies that will pay the entire monthly cost of some health care plans being offered in the online marketplaces set up under President Obama’s health care law, a surprising figure that has not.... More

Tablet wars: Apple cedes market share to Samsung. Today is the release date for Apple’s new iPad Air. Globally, Apple continues to dominate the growing tablet market. But as these Reuters charts show, in the last year, Samsung has been gaining ground, more than doubling the number of.... More

Welcomed with kisses, Stanford freshmen risk the 'kissing disease.' STANFORD, Calif. — It is minutes to midnight. A sultry full moon hangs over Stanford’s Memorial Church, bathing the campus’s red roofs and adobe-toned walls. In the Quad, thousands of students mill around, some bobbing drunkenly, some.... More

How to get an A- in organic chemistry. THE molecule looked like a giant jellyfish. Or maybe a spider. Halfway through my organic chemistry final, the monster lay there on the page, mocking me. My task: explain how the ungainly molecule folds into a tidy package. The problem: I had.... More

The pills of last resort. It was shortly after the breadbasket arrived last year at the Temple Bar near Harvard Square that Sarah Broom first told me about the last-ditch plan to save her own life. Broom’s mere presence that evening was something of a miracle..... More

Panel says climate change poses risk to food supplies. Climate change will pose sharp risks to the world’s food supply in coming decades, potentially undermining crop production and driving up prices at a time when the demand for food is expected to soar, scientists have found. More

Rollovers for flexible spending accounts. Workers taking advantage of special tax-free accounts to pay out-of-pocket medical expenses could soon be allowed to carry over up to $500 from one year to the next.For nearly 30 years, employees eligible to use the accounts had to forfeit any.... More

Food stamp cuts set to kick in Friday as Congress debates billions in.... More than 47 million Americans who receive food stamps will see their benefits go down starting Friday, just as Congress has begun negotiations on further cuts to the program. Beginning in November, a temporary benefit from the 2009 economic.... More

In first month, vast majority of Obamacare signups are in Medicaid. The first month of the new health law’s rollout reveals an unexpected pattern in several states: a crush of people applying for an expansion of Medicaid and a trickle of sign-ups for private insurance. This early imbalance — in some places,.... More

Homeland Security workers routinely boost pay with unearned overtime. Federal employees at the Department of Homeland Security call it the “candy bowl,” a pot of overtime money they have long dipped into to pad their pay even if they haven’t earned it, whistleblowers say. This practice, which can add up.... More

Walmart discounting could kill holiday season. U.S. retailers facing the shortest holiday season in years are preparing to assail customers with deals and promotions this week, before they have even digested their Halloween candy. Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) is kicking off its online.... More

When insurers drop policies: 3 stories. Charles Nance, Dean Wright and Julie Tyrrell are getting dropped — forced out of their existing health insurance plans — and landing smack in the middle of the uproar over President Obama’s health care law. One expects to pay more..... More

Illinois grade school test scores plunge — especially in poor.... The push to toughen state exams for Illinois grade school students triggered widespread drops in 2013 scores, with hundreds of schools in some of the state's poorest communities seeing performances plunge, test results show. But some schools.... More

Nightmares: terror in the kitchen. It was a dark and stormy night. Tree branches brushed the roof as the wind shook the house. She barely noticed from her spot in the kitchen, busy as she was chopping onions, simmering broth and using the immersion blender, while checking e-mail.... More

U.S. jobless claims decline by 10,000. WASHINGTON, Oct 31 — The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits declined largely as expected last week as the impact of a California computer glitch worked its way out of the report. Initial claims for state.... More

As interest fades in the humanities, colleges worry. STANFORD, Calif. — On Stanford University’s sprawling campus, where a long palm-lined drive leads to manicured quads, humanities professors produce highly regarded scholarship on Renaissance French literature and the philosophy of language.... More

No U.S. action, so states move on privacy laws. State legislatures around the country, facing growing public concern about the collection and trade of personal data, have rushed to propose a series of privacy laws, from limiting how schools can collect student data to deciding whether the.... More

Is the sugar high a sweet-tooth myth? Sugar highs seem to be a part of many kids’ Halloween traditions, but no one has ever been able to prove that such a phenomenon actually exists, scientists say. Parents offer trick-or-treat bagfuls of anecdotal evidence that when their.... More

Parents with few options still turn to troubled youth ranches, despite.... LBUQUERQUE, N.M. — David Hall was afraid of his own son. They were getting into violent, physical fights requiring police intervention. Fearing the teen would end up in juvenile detention, Hall had his son hauled away in handcuffs and.... More

Lighter and faster, it's iPad Air. The iPad Air is noticeably lighter than its predecessors. If you are the least bit interested in the new tablet computer from Apple, you probably already know that. The company’s engineers shaved just short of a third off the weight of the.... More

U.S. consumer prices rise, but underlying inflation is benign. U.S. consumer prices rose modestly in September but there was little sign of underlying inflation in the economy, which should give the Federal Reserve scope to maintain its monthly bond purchases. More

In Boston, Obama will point to health law's success. President Obama will travel to Boston on Wednesday to promote the success of the Massachusetts health care program on which the Affordable Care Act was based, while Mr. Obama’s top health official faces an intense grilling on Capitol Hill.... More

Why is it so hard to diagnose ADHD? No laboratory or imaging tests exist to reliably diagnose ADHD. A diagnosis relies only on behavioral symptoms and ruling out other disorders. Many doctors believe that the disorder is both overdiagnosed in some children but underdiagnosed in.... More

Washington state voters will weigh in on million-dollar food fight. In Washington state, a well-financed food fight is about to come to an end. More than $27 million has been spent on an initiative before voters next Tuesday that would require labeling of genetically-modified foods. That’s nearly $10.... More

Education system equating time with learning is being challenged after.... IN 1893, Charles Eliot, president of Harvard, introduced to the National Education Association a novel concept: the credit hour. Roughly equivalent to one hour of lecture time a week for a 12- to 14-week semester, it became the basic unit of a.... More

U.S. home prices rise again in August; yearly gain best since 2006. NEW YORK — U.S. single-family home prices rose in August and also posted their strongest annual gain in more than seven years, a closely watched survey showed on Tuesday. The S&P/Case Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas rose.... More

Warily, schools watch students on the Internet. SAN FRANCISCO — For years, a school principal’s job was to make sure students were not creating a ruckus in the hallways or smoking in the bathroom. Vigilance ended at the schoolhouse gates. Now, as students complain, taunt and sometimes.... More

Older workers tend to be happier, survey finds. A study by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 9 in 10 workers who are age 50 or older say they are very or somewhat satisfied with their job. Older workers reported satisfaction regardless of gender, race,.... More

7 ridiculous restrictions on women's rights around the world. With Saudi Arabian women behind the wheel since Saturday to protest their country's refusal to grant driver's licenses to women, they’re challenging not only long-standing restriction, but also a the larger system of Saudi Arabian.... More

Health site's woes could dissuade vital enrollee: the young and healthy. Sean Jackson, like tens of thousands of other Americans, has had trouble signing up for medical coverage using the HealthCare.gov insurance marketplace, despite several attempts. “I was able to create an account on Oct. 2, and I haven’t.... More

Lists that rank colleges value are on the rise. Looking out over the quadrangle before him as students dashed from one class to the next, James Muyskens was feeling proud one recent afternoon, and why not? The college he had led for the past 11 years had just been awarded second place in a.... More

F.D.A. shift on painkillers was years in the making. When Heather Dougherty heard the news last week that the Food and Drug Administration had recommended tightening how doctors prescribed the most commonly used narcotic painkillers, she was overjoyed. Fourteen years earlier, her father, Dr..... More

Don't be the office dinosaur. Linda DiCicco is 53 going on 20. She works at a computer store in Southdale mall, where many of her customers are half her age, and so are her co-workers. “I went to a training seminar in Atlanta where my roommate was 22,” she said. “I.... More

Study finds brains flush toxic waste in sleep, including.... While we are asleep, our bodies may be resting, but our brains are busy taking out the trash. A new study has found that the cleanup system in the brain, responsible for flushing out toxic waste products that cells produce with daily use,.... More

Teen drinking: should parents ever look the other way? It’s one of the fault lines of modern parenting: What do you do when you stumble into a teenage drinking party? Look the other way? Shut it down? Call the police? Susan Burkinshaw, a PTA mom from Germantown, Md., admits that she would want to.... More

Promised fix for health site could squeeze some users. The Obama administration said Friday that it would fix problems in the federal health insurance marketplace by Nov. 30, just two weeks before the deadline to sign up for coverage to replace health insurance policies being canceled because they.... More

Bottled water sales rising as soda ebbs. Few things are more American than Coca-Cola. But bottled water is washing away the palate trained to drain a bubbly soda. By the end of this decade, if not sooner, sales of bottled water are expected to surpass those of carbonated soft drinks,.... More

Biotech firms program living cells like iPhone apps, heralding a.... For scientist Jack Newman, creating a new life-form has become as simple as this: He types out a DNA sequence on his laptop. Clicks “send.” And a few yards away in the laboratory, robotic arms mix together some compounds to produce the.... More

Eight states teaming up to support electric cars. In an effort to spur lackluster sales of electric cars, California, New York and six other states said on Thursday that they would work jointly to adopt a range of measures, including encouraging more charging stations and changing building.... More

To combat elder abuse, doormen are enlisted to keep a watchful eye. Michael Marlow, a doorman at the Gracie Mews apartment building on the Upper East Side, does a lot more than just open doors for residents. He unscrews their jar lids, runs to the store for apple juice, listens to their complaints about spouses.... More

F.D.A. urging tighter rein on painkillers. The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday recommended tighter controls on how doctors prescribe the most commonly used narcotic painkillers, changes that are expected to take place as early as next year. More

F.D.A. moves to regulate food for animals. The Food and Drug Administration proposed rules on Friday that would govern the production of pet food and farm animal feed for the first time. The regulation would help prevent food-borne illness in both animals and people, officials at the.... More

U.S. unemployment applications fall to 350,000. The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits dropped 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 350,000 last week, though the total was elevated for the third straight week by technical problems in California. The Labor Department said Thursday.... More

Better news in new study that assesses U.S. students. Amid growing alarm over the slipping international competitiveness of American students, a report comparing math and science test scores of eighth graders in individual states to those in other countries has found that a majority outperformed.... More

How music can boost our workouts. Making music — and not just listening to it — while exercising makes the exercise easier, a remarkable new experiment finds, suggesting that the human love of music may have evolved, in part, to ease physical effort. More

Case explores rights of fetus versus mother. JACKSON, Wis. — Alicia Beltran cried with fear and disbelief when county sheriffs surrounded her home on July 18 and took her in handcuffs to a holding cell. She was 14 weeks pregnant and thought she had done the right thing when, at a.... More

Health law fails to keep prices low in rural areas. As technical failures bedevil the rollout of President Obama’s health care law, evidence is emerging that one of the program’s loftiest goals — to encourage competition among insurers in an effort to keep costs low — is falling short.... More

It's true: Moms can like a kid best, study finds. Despite what they may say, mothers have favorites among their children, and a new study finds that those preferences tend to continue into old age. The authors of the study suggest that doctors, hospital staff and family members need to take.... More

Federal judge clears way for challenge of health care law. WASHINGTON – A federal judge cleared the way on Tuesday for consumers to challenge President Obama’s health care law on the grounds that the federal government cannot legally provide subsidies to people who buy insurance through the.... More

Shutdown will hinder true gauge of U.S. economy. Like a driver with a broken speedometer, economists are being forced to come up with new ways to gauge the economy’s strength as the aftereffects of the government shutdown distort the usual metrics. Unlike the delayed jobs data released on.... More

Annual rise in cost of public college slows. Tuition and fees at public universities increased less than 3 percent this academic year, the smallest rise in three decades, according to the annual College Board reports on trends in pricing and aid. “This does not mean that college is.... More

Sebelius faces firestorm on health care exchanges. The first, and perhaps most painful, call for Kathleen Sebelius to resign as President Obama’s health secretary came this month from an old family friend: Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, who once boasted of a “special.... More

Language-gap study bolsters a push for Pre-K. Nearly two decades ago, a landmark study found that by age 3, the children of wealthier professionals have heard words millions more times than those of less educated parents, giving them a distinct advantage in school and suggesting the need.... More

Yoga dominated by women despite benefits to both sexes. At a yoga studio in the District recently, practitioners breathed, bent, twisted and stretched their way to a happier state. They left more relaxed, more energized, with better posture and a renewed outlook. But there was one curious thing: Of.... More

Poll shows major damage to GOP after shutdown. The budget confrontation that led to a partial government shutdown dealt a major blow to the GOP’s image and has exposed significant divisions between tea party supporters and other Republicans, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News.... More

Security check now starts long before you fly. The Transportation Security Administration is expanding its screening of passengers before they arrive at the airport by searching a wide array of government and private databases that can include records like car registrations and employment.... More

As gays wed in New Jersey, Christie ends court fight. As couples across New Jersey began marrying on Monday after the stroke of midnight, Gov. Chris Christie abandoned his long fight against same-sex marriage, concluding that signals from the court and the march of history were against him. More

Obama admits Web site flaws on health care. President Obama offered an impassioned defense of the Affordable Care Act on Monday, acknowledging the technical failures of the HealthCare.gov Web site, but providing little new information about the problems with the online portal or the.... More

Gay rights supporters wage quiet campaign to woo Republicans. Few elected Republicans support giving gays the right to marry. The party’s influential social-conservative wing sees “traditional marriage” as a defining issue. And while most major Democrats are rushing to embrace same-sex marriage,.... More

Tablet-makers gear up for latest skirmish. SAN FRANCISCO — The race for the tablet market has become a full-blown sprint. The intense competition will be highlighted on Tuesday, as Apple, Nokia and Microsoft each introduce new tablets. Those devices will be competing for consumer.... More

Breast milk bought online is often tainted, says study. A cottage industry has sprung up facilitating the sale and donation of human breast milk on the Internet, but a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics confirms the concerns of health professionals over this unregulated marketplace. More

Contractors see weeks of work on health site. Federal contractors have identified most of the main problems crippling President Obama’s online health insurance marketplace, but the administration has been slow to issue orders for fixing those flaws, and some contractors worry that the.... More

At 12:01, same-sex couples in New Jersey say 'I do.' In Lambertville, N.J., the marriage certificate of Beth Asaro and Joanne Schailey allowed only for a “bride” and a “groom,” so Ms. Asaro — in a pink suit — was listed as the groom, and Ms. Schailey — in a black suit — as the.... More

Chalk is the new (old) medium for self-expression. Chalkboards once were a classroom staple. They could be black or green, but always dusty all over with the dregs of algebra problems, history dates and homework assignments. Occasionally, someone might scrawl a wisecrack, or draw a rude stick.... More

Facebook changes privacy settings to let teenagers share with anyone on.... SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is now allowing teenagers to share their posts on the social network with anyone on the Internet, raising the risks of minors leaving a digital trail that could lead to trouble. The change announced Wednesday affects.... More

Republicans back down, ending crisis. Congressional Republicans conceded defeat on Wednesday in their bitter budget fight with President Obama over the new health care law as the House and Senate approved last-minute legislation ending a disruptive 16-day government shutdown and.... More

Gridlock has cost U.S. billions and the meter is still running. WASHINGTON — Containers of goods idling at ports. Reduced sales at sandwich shops in downtown Washington. Canceled vacations to national parks and to destinations abroad. Reduced corporate earnings forecasts. Higher interest payments on.... More

Search tools wanting on many exchanges. SHELBYVILLE, Ky. — As he was trying to sign up for health insurance through Kentucky’s new online exchange this month, Kenny Wheeler hit a wall. Mr. Wheeler, an independent sales representative with a neuromuscular disorder, had.... More

Riding to rescue? Senators seek debt limit, shutdown deal after House bill.... WASHINGTON — Senate leaders are optimistic about forging an eleventh-hour bipartisan deal preventing a possible federal default and ending the partial government shutdown after Republican divisions forced GOP leaders to drop efforts to ram.... More

Justices weigh Michigan law and race in college admissions. WASHINGTON — Just four months after the Supreme Court largely ducked the question of whether the University of Texas may take account of race in its admissions decisions, the justices heard arguments on Tuesday about whether Michigan’s.... More

Pounding pavement by heel or toe. A noteworthy new study suggests that each style of running has advantages and drawbacks, and the right way to run almost certainly depends on what kind of runner you already are. More

Night shifts not linked to mental decline. NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In a large study, middle-aged women working night shifts didn't suffer any long-term impairment in their thinking skills. Previous studies suggested working a mix of day and night shifts disrupts circadian rhythms -.... More

Obamacare's secret traffic weapon Healthcare.gov has, by all accounts, been an absolute train wreck of a website roll-out. Weeks after the site for the Affordable Care Act went online, users still couldn’t sign up for insurance or, in many cases, even get page site to load.... More

Senate near fiscal deal, but House is uncertain. WASHINGTON — Senate leaders neared the completion Monday night of a bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown while the rest of the world braced for the possibility of an American default that could set off a.... More

Richmond awaits a bold antipoverty plan. RICHMOND, Va. — Dressed on an unseasonably warm day, as ever, in a tailored suit, tie and pocket square, Mayor Dwight C. Jones, a fourth-generation pastor, arrived at a late-afternoon meeting this month to talk about his ambitious — some.... More

Haunted by a child's illness A child’s serious illness can cast a very long shadow across a family, often for years after the crisis has passed. A mother sat in our clinic recently, crying because her older child was having trouble in school. She blamed herself. A.... More

Social Security raise to be smallest in years. WASHINGTON — For the second straight year, millions of Social Security recipients, disabled veterans and federal retirees can expect historically small increases in their benefits come January. Preliminary figures suggest a benefit increase.... More

Debt-ceiling breach would push economy into freefall with no safety net. The Obama administration will have to decide whether to delay — or possibly suspend — tens of billions of dollars in Social Security checks, food stamps and unemployment benefits if negotiations to raise the federal debt ceiling are not.... More

In Washington State, home of highest minimum wage, a city aims higher. SEATAC, Wash. — Washington already has the highest state minimum wage in the country, at $9.19 an hour. Soon, voters in this tiny city south of Seattle will decide whether to push the local minimum even higher. More

Privacy fears grow as cities increase surveillance. OAKLAND, Calif. — Federal grants of $7 million awarded to this city were meant largely to help thwart terror attacks at its bustling port. But instead, the money is going to a police initiative that will collect and analyze reams of.... More

Patients mired in costly credit from doctors. The dentist set to work, tapping and probing, then put down his tools and delivered the news. His patient, Patricia Gannon, needed a partial denture. The cost: more than $5,700. Ms. Gannon, 78, was staggered. She said she could not afford it..... More

Online application woes make students anxious, put colleges behind.... With early admission deadlines looming for hundreds of thousands of students, the new version of the online Common Application shared by more than 500 colleges and universities has been plagued by numerous malfunctions, alarming students and.... More

The soaring cost of a simple breath. OAKLAND, Calif. — The kitchen counter in the home of the Hayes family is scattered with the inhalers, sprays and bottles of pills that have allowed Hannah, 13, and her sister, Abby, 10, to excel at dance and gymnastics despite a horrific.... More

From the start, signs of trouble a health portal. WASHINGTON — In March, Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the Obama administration’s new online insurance marketplace, told industry executives that he was deeply worried about the Web site’s debut. “Let’s just make sure.... More

Shrunken paychecks force furloughed to slash expenses, take loans, second.... The paycheck federal workers have been dreading hit bank accounts across the region Friday, representing salaries cut in half for most idled employees. The next payday will be all zeros, and with furloughs dragging on, civil servants are.... More

Obama, Republicans in debt talks on two fronts. President Obama opened talks with House Republicans on Thursday about their plan to lift the federal debt limit through late November, raising hopes that Washington would avert its first default on the national debt. But after a 90-minute.... More

VW plant opens door to union and dispute. FRANKFURT — The face-off between Volkswagen and the United Automobile Workers over organizing the company’s new plant in Tennessee is rapidly becoming a global clash of cultures. For months, the U.A.W. has been trying hard to get.... More

In Florida, opposition by the State and snags in signing up on the Web. MIAMI — Be it gold, silver or bronze level, there are two ironclad requirements for buying health insurance in Florida on the federal online exchange: patience and persistence. “Please wait,” read the message on the exchange Web site..... More

Health Act embraced in California. LOS ANGELES — There are radio and television commercials galore, along with Twitter and Facebook posts and scores of highway billboards. There are armies of outreach workers who speak Spanish, Tagalog, Cambodian, Mandarin and Cantonese, all.... More

Some say flawed health care site's problems highlight flawed federal IT.... Problems with the federal government’s new health-care Web site have attracted legions of armchair analysts who speak of its problems with “virtualization” and “load testing.” Yet increasingly, they are saying the root cause is not.... More

California expands availability of abortions. LOS ANGELES — Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday expanded access to abortion in California, signing a bill to allow nurse practitioners, midwives and physician assistants to perform a common type of the procedure, an aspiration abortion, during.... More

"Flipped" schools are turning education upside down. Three years ago, Clintondale High School, just north of Detroit, became a “flipped school” — one where students watch teachers’ lectures at home and do what we’d otherwise call “homework” in class. Teachers record video lessons,.... More

Fat and thin find common ground. When binge eating disorder gained legitimacy as a full-fledged mental condition in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in May, many people in the eating disorders and obesity communities wondered:.... More

Risk to food safety seen in furloughs The government shutdown is endangering what America eats, food safety experts said this week, as all inspections of domestic food except meat and poultry have halted and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recalled furloughed workers.... More

Cancer patient's treatment on hold because of shutdown. In April 2012, Michelle Langbehn was diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that affects 1 percent of cancer patients in the United States. After nine months of chemotherapy, she and her doctor began looking into other potential.... More

In China, parents bribe to get kids into top schools, despite.... BEIJING — For years, Yang Jie’s friends warned her to save up for her daughter’s education. Not for tuition or textbooks, but for the bribes needed to get into this city’s better public schools. A strong-willed, self-made businesswoman,.... More

Veto halts bill that would allow jury duty for non-citizens. LOS ANGELES — Breaking with Democrats in the State Legislature, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill on Monday that would have made California the first state to allow immigrants who are not citizens to serve on juries, saying that the.... More

Health exchange delays tied to software crash in early rush. The technical problems that have hampered enrollment in the online health insurance exchanges resulted from the failure of a major software component, designed by private contractors, that crashed under the weight of millions of users last.... More

U.S. adults fare poorly in study of skills. American adults lag well behind their counterparts in most other developed countries in the mathematical and technical skills needed for a modern workplace, according to a study released Tuesday. The study, perhaps the most detailed of its.... More

How emotional intelligence affects your relationships. Our success in life, teachers would have us believe, is determined largely by our academic achievements. Another critical factor, we are told, is our intelligence quotient (IQ), a measure of baseline intellect. But here’s a secret truth:.... More

Breakthroughs in prenatal screening. More than 30 years ago, a 37-year-old friend of mine with an unplanned fourth pregnancy was told by her obstetrician that an amniocentesis was “too dangerous” and could cause a miscarriage. She ultimately bore a child severely affected.... More

Abortion vote exposes rift at a Catholic university. LOS ANGELES — Not three weeks have passed since Pope Francis said the church had grown “obsessed” with abortion, declaring, “We have to find a new balance.” But on the campus of Loyola Marymount University, overlooking this city’s.... More

Fed up on the prairie, and voting on seceding from Colorado. CHEYENNE WELLS, Colo. — The Old West has decided it is fed up with the New West. At Nan’s convenience store here in eastern Colorado, where the front door tells visitors that “Gun Control Is Hitting Your Target,” the farmers, crop.... More

Supreme Court has weighty docket in its new term. WASHINGTON — After back-to-back terms ending in historic rulings that riveted the nation, the Supreme Court might have been expected to return to its usual diet of routine cases that rarely engage the public. Instead, the court’s new term,.... More

GOP elders see liabilities in shutdown. The hard-line stance of Republican House members on the government shutdown is generating increasing anger among senior Republican officials, who say the small bloc of conservatives is undermining the party and helping President Obama just as.... More

Boehner tells aides he will avoid a default on federal debt. In meetings with small groups of rank-and-file lawmakers, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has emphasized that he will not permit the country to default for the first time on its debt. More

Making life, and your cat, sit still. When Mimi Vang Olsen is commissioned to paint a portrait of a home and its inhabitants, her goal is not simply to record the color of the walls and the style of the sofa. Her aim is to produce a small, richly textured domestic drama, studded.... More

For better social skills, study says read a little Chekhov. Say you are getting ready for a blind date or a job interview. What should you do? Besides shower and shave, of course, it turns out you should read — but not just anything. Something by Chekhov or Alice Munro will help you navigate new.... More

Jobs report becomes a casualty of shutdown. On the first Friday morning of almost any other month, from the trading floors of Wall Street to the hushed hallways of the Federal Reserve, all the attention would be focused on two numbers: the latest government estimates for unemployment.... More

Teachers bring fashion into the classroom. A school district in West Virginia prohibits teachers from wearing faded jeans and shorts to work. Last month, an Alabama school superintendent proposed a dress code banning capri pants and scarves, plus restrictions on eye makeup and nail.... More

Shutdown could cost jobs down the line, report says. The economic impacts of a government shutdown are likely to vary depending on geographic location, how many federal employees live in a given area, and how long the partial halt in operations lasts, according to one economist. More

As government slugs it out, its workers take it on the chin. PHILADELPHIA — Lyn Kirshenbaum understands why President Obama and Congressional Republicans keep exchanging roundhouse swings over health care and federal spending. Politics is a brutal business. What she does not understand is why she is.... More

Why are there still so few women in science? Last summer, researchers at Yale published a study proving that physicists, chemists and biologists are likely to view a young male scientist more favorably than a woman with the same qualifications. Presented with identical summaries of the.... More

Millions of poor left uncovered by health care law. A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that.... More

San Francisco passes law to prohibit immigrant holds. (Reuters) - San Francisco officials on Tuesday moved to curb their partnership with U.S. immigration authorities, by ending a practice that facilitates deportations by extending the detention of illegal immigrants arrested for crimes. More

Everything you need to know about life under Obamacare. “Obamacare” is what we’ve all apparently decided to call the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a set of health reforms passed by the Congress and signed into law by President Obama in March 2010. The law itself touches on.... More

Dartmouth in the glare of scrutiny on drinking. HANOVER, N.H. — It is a new school year, and there is a new president, Philip J. Hanlon, who no doubt would prefer to begin his tenure as the 18th president of Dartmouth College dealing with issues more lofty than binge drinking, sexual.... More

How intense study may harm our workouts. Tire your brain and your body may follow, a remarkable new study of mental fatigue finds. Strenuous mental exertion may lessen endurance and lead to shortened workouts, even if, in strict physiological terms, your body still has plenty of.... More

On day 1, parks close, workers stay home, and 'Panda Cam' goes dark. WASHINGTON — If there was a symbol on Tuesday of America’s pent-up frustration with a gridlocked political system, it was this: Scores of aging World War II and Vietnam veterans pushing past barricades to honor their fallen comrades at a.... More

Economists worry about prolonged shutdown's danger to economy. A prolonged government shutdown — followed by a potential default on the federal debt — would have economic ripple effects far beyond Washington, upending financial markets, sending the unemployment rate higher and slowing already tepid.... More

Shrinking list of video games is dominated by Blockbusters. Big video game makers, like their cousins in books and music, have scrambled in recent years to adapt to the digital technologies buffeting their business. Tens of millions of people now play games on smartphones and tablets, usually for a.... More

A wave of sewing jobs as orders pile up at U.S. factories. MINNEAPOLIS — It was past quitting time at a new textile factory here, but that was not the only reason the work floor looked so desolate. Under the high ceilings, the fluorescent lights still bright, there were just 15 or so industrial.... More

Health insurance exchanges scramble to be ready as opening day nears. PORTLAND, Ore. — Rocky King, the executive director of Oregon’s new health insurance exchange, has done everything in his power to tamp down expectations for its opening on Tuesday. He rejected the idea of a flashy downtown news conference.... More

Senate action on health law moves to brink of shutdown. The Senate is expected to reject decisively a House bill that would delay the full effect of President Obama’s health care law as a condition for keeping the government running past Monday, as Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority.... More

Children's National to build nation's first pediatric IT center. Children’s National Medical Center in Washington and Cerner, a health care technology provider based in Kansas City, Mo., are each investing several million dollars to build what they say is the nation’s first health information technology.... More

How eight lives would be affected by Obamacare. Fatima Abukar has not had health insurance since arriving in the United States from Somalia a decade ago. The health law won’t change that. She is one of millions of people too poor to benefit from Obamacare. More

Your 4-year-old scored a 95? Better luck next time. When other preschool parents bragged that their children had aced the admission test for New York City private schools with a top score of 99 in every section, Justine Oddo stayed quiet. Her twin boys had not done as well. More

Your 4-year-old scored a 95? Better luck next time. When other preschool parents bragged that their children had aced the admission test for New York City private schools with a top score of 99 in every section, Justine Oddo stayed quiet. Her twin boys had not done as well. More

With special courts, NY aims to steer women away from sex trade. New York State is creating a statewide system of specialized criminal courts to handle prostitution cases and provide services to help wrest human- and sex-trafficking victims from the cycle of exploitation and arrest, the state’s chief judge.... More

A nudge to poorer students to aim high on colleges. The group that administers the SAT has begun a nationwide outreach program to try to persuade more low-income high school seniors who scored high on standardized tests to apply to select colleges. More

Samsung dazzles phablet followers with more girth, size. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is seeking to dazzle followers of the phablet with bigger screens, and even possibly with a curved one, in its attempt to fence off a segment of smartphones once mocked for their girth and size. More

Minnesota's Hazelden, California's Betty Ford Center to merge. Two household names in addiction treatment, Hazelden and the Betty Ford Center, said Tuesday they are merging to create the largest nonprofit addiction treatment organization in the nation. The melding of the two addiction care powerhouses.... More

Some companies divulging more about their political contributions. Some of the nation’s largest publicly traded companies are divulging more details about their political contributions, in part to ward off lawsuits and mounting pressure from shareholders, who increasingly have thrust the issue before boards.... More

Why runners don't get knee arthritis. One of the most entrenched beliefs about running, at least among nonrunners, is that it causes arthritis and ruins knees. But a nifty new study finds that this idea is a myth and distance running is unlikely to contribute to the development of.... More

Officials offer first look at premium costs of health plan. The Obama administration on Tuesday provided the first detailed look at premiums to be charged to consumers for health insurance in 36 states where the federal government will run new insurance markets starting next week, highlighting costs it.... More

FAA expected to relax rules for gadgets during flight. Travelers may soon be spared the inopportune phrase, “Please turn off all electronic devices.” The Federal Aviation Administration could decide as soon as this week to relax the ban on some personal electronic devices at low altitudes. New.... More

Illegal immigration may be rising again, says report. The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has leveled off but may be on the rise again, following a sharp drop that accompanied the start of the Great Recession, according to a report released Monday. More

Hostels gain popularity with business travelers. Ferdi van ‘t Wout, a manager for a global electronics manufacturer in the Netherlands, frequently stays in hostels when traveling for work, an option he discovered last year by accident. “I unexpectedly needed to be in Copenhagen to meet.... More

Victims push laws to end online revenge posts. He was a muscular guy with “kind of a nerdy kind of charm,” Marianna Taschinger recalled, a combination that proved irresistible to an 18-year-old girl in a small Texas town. They dated, broke up, dated again. He asked her to pick out a.... More

Struggling, San Jose tests a way to cut benefits. SAN JOSE, Calif. — This metropolis of nearly a million residents is the third-largest city in California, home to tens of thousands of technology industry workers, as well as many thousands more struggling to get by. Yet even here, in the.... More

New concerns on robotic surgeries. In early March 2009, Erin Izumi, a woman in her 30s from Tacoma, Wash., underwent robotically assisted surgery to treat endometriosis. The operation dragged on for nearly 11 hours. Ten days later, Izumi was rushed to an emergency room, where.... More

Concordia captain blames helmsman for botched move at shipwreck trial. GROSSETO, Italy — At his trial on Monday, the captain of the shipwrecked Costa Concordia blamed his helmsman for botching a last-minute corrective maneuver that he contended would have avoided the cruise ship's deadly collision with a reef. More

What did Apple get right about the new iOS7? A redesign of this magnitude is extremely hard to do. When you completely reimagine something, more or less from scratch, it's tough to please everybody. As much as people maybe like to say they like change, people are creatures of habit. They.... More

Dietary report card disappoints. The latest “report card” on changes in the American diet, collated by the nutritionist Bonnie Liebman and published in the September issue of the center’s Nutrition Action Newsletter, is not one Americans should be especially proud of. More

Lower health insurance premiums to come at cost of fewer choices. WASHINGTON — Federal officials often say that health insurance will cost consumers less than expected under President Obama’s health care law. But they rarely mention one big reason: many insurers are significantly limiting the choices of.... More

U.S. disability rolls swell in tough economy.   MILLINOCKET, MAINE — The huge mills along the Penobscot River roared virtually nonstop for more than a century, turning the dense Maine forests into paper and lifting the thousands of men who did the hot and often backbreaking work.... More

Living in Mexico, learning in the U.S. AT THE U.S. BORDER, Columbus, N.M. — The mothers, holding the small hands of their children, can go only as far as the glass door, where Mexico ends and America begins. They lean down and send off their little ones with a kiss and a silent.... More

Blackberry to cut 40% of workforce after big loss. OTTAWA — At their peak, just a few years ago, BlackBerry smartphones were symbols of corporate and political power. When President Obama took office he made keeping his BlackBerry a personal priority, and when BlackBerry service had a hiccup.... More

Navy hearing in rape case raises alarm. WASHINGTON — For roughly 30 hours over several days, defense lawyers for three former United States Naval Academy football players grilled a female midshipman about her sexual habits. In a public hearing, they asked the woman, who has accused.... More

California expands the rights of non-citizens. California is challenging the historic status of American citizenship with measures to permit noncitizens to sit on juries and monitor polls for elections in which they cannot vote and to open the practice of law even to those here illegally..... More

Citing abuses, lawmakers call for examination of tax-lien programs.... A dozen U.S. senators are calling on the federal government to investigate tax-lien programs across the country and find ways to thwart “unscrupulous practices” that in the District alone have cost dozens of families their homes. More

Lawmakers scale back ambitions as government shutdown looms. When House Majority Leader Eric Cantor rolled out a list of Republican demands this week for raising the federal debt limit, there was a surprising omission: any real plan to tackle the debt. Republicans have long vowed to use the threat of.... More

Task force backs change in legal education system. Faced with rising student debt and declining applications to law schools, a task force of the American Bar Association is calling for sweeping changes in legal education, including training people without law degrees to provide limited legal.... More

What's more important: sleep or exercise? What’s more important: an extra hour of sleep or getting up early to exercise? How do I balance an extra hour of sleep against 40 minutes of exercise? When should I give in to the desire for more sleep and when should I push myself to.... More

U.S. textile plants return, but with floors largely empty of people. GAFFNEY, S.C. — The old textile mills here are mostly gone now. Gaffney Manufacturing, National Textiles, Cherokee — clangorous, dusty, productive engines of the Carolinas fabric trade — fell one by one to the forces of globalization. More

Minnesota anti-poverty program stretches its wings to Texas. The Jeremiah Program, which has helped more than a thousand Minnesota mothers and their children lift themselves out of poverty, is taking its formula nationwide. Thursday, the Minneapolis-based nonprofit will welcome its first clients in.... More

Firms must disclose how much more CEOs make than workers, says SEC. The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday narrowly approved a plan that would require companies to disclose how much more their chief executives are paid than their other employees, advancing an initiative that has been years in the.... More

America's sinking middle class. In some respects, 1988 has the feel of an alien, distant era. There was no such thing as the World Wide Web then. The Soviet Union was still around; the Berlin Wall still standing. Americans elected a Republican president who would raise taxes.... More

New study lends conclusive support to scoliosis treatment. A new study provides the best evidence yet that wearing a back brace will slow the progression of the most common form of scoliosis in adolescents, helping them avoid painful spine surgery. Physicians have recommended bracing for more than 50.... More

Mental health is renewed focus in gun control debate. Despite deep divisions that have kept Congress from passing new gun safety laws for almost two decades, there is one aspect of gun control on which many Democrats, Republicans and even the National Rifle Association agree: the need to give.... More

Homeless Boston man turns in thousands in cash he found. A homeless Boston man who turned in a backpack containing tens of thousands of dollars in cash and traveler’s checks says even if he were desperate he wouldn’t have kept “even a penny.” Glen James was honored Monday at police.... More

All the financial advice you'll ever need on a 4x6 index card. Think managing your finances has to be complicated? Wonkblog contributor (and UC Chicago social scientist) Harold Pollack doesn't. After a talk with personal finance expert Helaine Olen, Pollack managed to write down pretty much everything you.... More

DNA double take. From biology class to “C.S.I.,” we are told again and again that our genome is at the heart of our identity. Read the sequences in the chromosomes of a single cell, and learn everything about a person’s genetic information — or,.... More

In pursuit of tastier chickens, a diet of four-star scraps. EPHRATA, Pa. — They may be the most pampered chickens on the planet. On certain days, a truck pulls up alongside their quiet, spacious coop on an Amish farm here and delivers a feast that seems tailored to a flock of two-legged aristocrats..... More

Complex science at issue in politics of fetal pain. It is a new frontier of the anti-abortion movement: laws banning abortion at 20 weeks after conception, contending that fetuses can feel pain then. Since 2010, a dozen states have enacted them, most recently Texas. Nationally, a bill.... More

Minnesota's childcare union debate, a national issue, is hitting home. Far from the all-night drama of the State Capitol or the legal battling in the courtroom, the fight over unionizing in-home child-care providers has come into the communities and homes of those who must keep order in a houseful of preschoolers.... More

Companies race to gain foothold in new smartphone market for workplace.... A handful of tech companies are betting that smartphones will eventually serve a different role in the workplace than they do outside. The “bring your own device” trend — employers cutting IT budgets by requiring employees to use personal.... More

When teams lose, fans tackle fatty foods. When Vinnie Richichi started watching the Pittsburgh Steelers’ home opener against the Tennessee Titans last Sunday, he was feeling great. After all, the Steelers had won their first home game six years in a row. Then things indeed went south.... More

Teenagers are getting more exercise and vegetables. Teenagers are exercising more, consuming less sugar and eating more fruits and vegetables, a trend that may be contributing to a leveling off of obesity rates, a new study shows. The findings suggest that aggressive anti-obesity messages.... More

In gun debate, divide grows as both sides dig in for battle. The weeks after a gunman killed 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., were characterized by a new optimism about a goal that had seemed elusive for almost a decade: tougher gun laws. The shooting was called on more than one occasion “a game.... More

Some employers see perks of hiring older workers; cite experience,.... Older people searching for jobs have long fought back stereotypes that they lack the speed, technology skills and dynamism of younger applicants. But as a wave of baby boomers seeks to stay on the job later in life, some employers are finding.... More

Fraud investigation unsettles mental health care in New Mexico. SANTA FE, N.M. — For weeks now, New Mexico has been in the midst of a sweeping criminal investigation into 15 of its largest mental health providers, suspected of defrauding Medicaid of $36 million over three years. Arizona companies have.... More

Living apart, together With housing in New York City an increasingly scarce and costly commodity, and under the hoary “two can live as cheaply as one” rule, logic would seem to dictate that couples would move heaven and earth to place themselves under a single.... More

Financing start-up dreams with retirement savings. Bohnne Jones had always dreamed of being an architect or interior designer. Suzie Ford wanted to know if the home-brewed beer her husband, Todd, made was as good as people said it was, while Jan Morris figured owning a distillery would be more.... More

Girl's suicide points to rise in apps used by cyberbullies. MIAMI — The clues were buried in her bedroom. Before leaving for school on Monday morning, Rebecca Ann Sedwick had hidden her schoolbooks under a pile of clothes and left her cellphone behind, a rare lapse for a 12-year-old girl. More

Despite 'grave danger,' government allows Internet forums to go unchecked. Tom and Misty Mealey brimmed with hope as a battered purple pickup pulled up to their Virginia home. The Mealeys were prepared to give away one of their children: a 5-year-old boy they had adopted from Guatemala months earlier. The boy.... More

Preschool praised as great crime prevention. A growing number of preschoolers have headed to class this fall in St. Paul and elsewhere in Minnesota and, in the eyes of the law, that is an investment worth making. Quality preschool can help prevent kids from becoming career criminals. More

Drinking milk in pregnancy may lead to taller children. A new study suggests that the amount of milk a woman drinks during pregnancy may affect the adult height of her offspring. Researchers followed 685 Danish mother-child pairs in a prospective study over 20 years, tracking milk consumption during.... More

FDA panel backs pre-surgery drug for breast cancer A federal advisory committee cleared the way on Thursday for the first approval of a cancer drug that would be used to treat patients before surgery to remove their tumors. he advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration voted 13 to.... More

Fed prepares to change policies and policy-makers. WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve officials, who have made clear that they intend to cut back on the Fed’s monthly asset purchases by the end of the year, must decide next week whether it is time to tap the brakes or better to wait another.... More

Best colleges 2014: U.S. News ranks top ten. U.S. News has ranked the top National Universities – research institutions that award degrees at every level – for more than 25 years. Because of ties, 11 schools made this year’s top 10, which spans both coasts.  Princeton, Harvard.... More

Virginia takes a stand against solitary confinement. SOLITARY CONFINEMENT is one of the cruelest fates that can befall a prisoner — so cruel, in fact, that the Supreme Court nearly declared it unconstitutional in 1890. Unfortunately, this particular punishment has remained a bitter reality of.... More

Middle-aged men, too, can blame estrogen for that waistline. It is the scourge of many a middle-aged man: he starts getting a pot belly, using lighter weights at the gym and somehow just doesn’t have the sexual desire of his younger years. The obvious culprit is testosterone, since men gradually make.... More

No child left untableted Sally Hurd Smith, a veteran teacher, held up her brand-new tablet computer and shook it as she said, “I don’t want this thing to take over my classroom.” It was late June, a month before the first day of school. In a sixth-grade classroom.... More

Unions' misgivings on health law burst into view. LOS ANGELES — When President Obama phoned the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. last month, he shared some news that the labor leader had long wanted to hear — the administration would propose measures to reduce workplace exposure to.... More

Children suffering from growing economic inequality among families since.... American families are becoming increasingly polarized along race, class and educational lines, according to a new report released Wednesday, a sign of growing economic inequality that was exacerbated by the Great Recession. More

Myths surround breakfast and weight gain. Americans have long been told that routinely eating breakfast is a simple habit that helps prevent weight gain. Skipping breakfast, the thinking goes, increases hunger throughout the day, making people overeat and seek out snacks to compensate.... More

Machines made to know you - by touch, voice, even by heart. How does a machine verify the identity of a human being? Irises, heartbeats, fingertips and voices, for starters. Authentication has been a tough nut to crack since the early days of the Web. Now comes a batch of high-tech alternatives, some.... More

On 9/11 anniversary, moments of silence and reflection. Michael Ollis was not even in high school when terrorists slammed jetliners into the World Trade Center towers. This summer, 12 years later, he was serving his third combat tour with the United States Army when insurgents attacked his base in.... More

Two Colorado gun control supporters voted out of office. Two Colorado Democrats who provided crucial support for a slate of tough new gun-control laws were voted out of office on Tuesday in a recall vote widely seen as a test of popular support for gun restrictions after mass shootings in a.... More

Working longer as jobs contract. IN recent years, many retirement experts have been giving the same unwelcome advice: American workers who are not as rich as Warren E. Buffett should retire three or so years later than they had planned — to ensure that they have a large.... More

Stem cell treatments overtake science. TIJUANA, Mexico — Maggie Alejos arrived here in June from St. Anne, Ill., with her husband, her daughter and a cashier’s check for $13,500, payable to the Regenerative Medicine Institute. Rail-thin, with an oxygen tube anchored above her.... More

Judges hear arguments on rules for Internet. WASHINGTON — In a momentous battle over whether the Web should remain free and open, members of a federal appeals court expressed doubt over a government requirement that Internet service providers treat all traffic equally. More

With a cheaper iPhone, Apple faces hazards SAN FRANCISCO — For upscale brands, there is a fine line between “cheaper” and “cheap.” And for Apple, the premium electronics maker, the key is to avoid crossing it. Apple on Tuesday will introduce two iPhones, including a new.... More

Invasive tactics in foreclosures draws scrutiny. Barry Tatum returned to his home in Chicago in December to find that his front and back doors had been torn from their hinges, leaving his possessions exposed to the frigid winds that whipped through his neighborhood. Terrified that he had been.... More

31 million will still be left behind after Obamacare. Every month, a hundred or so people crowd the lobby of the Arlington Free Clinic, clutching blue tickets to enter a health-care lottery. Uninsured and ailing, they hope to be among the two dozen who hit the jackpot and are given free care. Some.... More

USDA pilot program fails to stop contaminated meat. A meat inspection program that the Agriculture Department plans to roll out in pork plants nationwide has repeatedly failed to stop the production of contaminated meat at American and foreign plants that have already adopted the approach,.... More

Fetus in womb learns language cues before birth, study finds. Watch your mouth around your unborn child — he or she could be listening in. From the sounds of it, babies can pick up language skills while they’re still in the womb. Fetuses exposed to fake words after week 29 in utero were able to.... More

Despite heavy lobbying, chances slim for Congressional action on.... WASHINGTON – Congress is likely to postpone consideration of an immigration overhaul until the end of the year, if not longer, even as advocates are preparing for an all-out urgent push this fall to win their long-standing goal of a path to.... More

Giving mobility when legs can't. NEWARK, DEL. — When automakers conceive vehicles for the youth market, they aim to appeal to drivers 18 to 24 years old. Cole Galloway skews much, much younger: he designs cars for the 18- to 24-month bracket. More

Google races to encrypt data amid backlash against NSA spying. Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the NSA and the intelligence agencies of foreign governments, company officials said Friday. More

Soft jobs data not expected to delay fed. Despite a disappointing jobs report on Friday that raised fresh questions about the nation’s economic strength, analysts say they still believe the Federal Reserve will start pulling back on its stimulus program in a few weeks. More

A university band, chastened by hazing, makes its return. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Knees sprang up, way up, as the students stepped into their slow march during practice this week. Sweat cascaded down their bodies, but they held the pose, five seconds, again and again. Then, they burst across the field,.... More

Insurance rolls to rise in state fighting plan. FLORENCE, S.C. — Brenda B. Culick has two stents in her heart and a severe wound in her right leg, injured while she was doing home repairs six months ago. But she cannot afford to see a cardiologist or go to a wound care center. More

Seeking investments that are both profitable and green. SARAH KUPFERBERG’S youthful rebellion was slightly unconventional — she wanted to invest in green companies, not the big industrials her parents had preferred. But like most novice investors, she stumbled along the way, once putting money.... More

One in five married households has foreign-born spouse. One in five married households has at least one spouse who was born outside the United States, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. Three states and the District of Columbia have 12 percent or more households where one spouse is American-born.... More

Economy added 169k jobs in August as recovery grinds along. The U.S. economy added 169,000 jobs last month, according to government data released Friday morning, as the grinding recovery continues to disappoint. The Labor Department’s monthly estimate of hiring was weaker than many analysts had.... More

Rise is seen in students who use e-cigarettes. WASHINGTON — The share of middle and high school students who use e-cigarettes doubled in 2012 from the previous year, federal data show. The rise is prompting concerns among health officials that the new devices could be creating as many.... More

San Antonio passes far-reaching anti-discrimination measure. In San Antonio, a nondiscrimination ordinance that includes protections for sexual orientation and gender identity turned into a divisive political battle this summer, the likes of which this liberal-leaning city of 1.4 million has rarely seen.... More

National parks reaching out to minorities. When Shelton Johnson was 5, his family took him to Berchtesgaden National Park in the Bavarian Alps. To this day, he remembers his sense of awe. “The mountains, the sky being so close — it affected me profoundly,” said Mr. Johnson, who.... More

AP Newsbreak: Sticker price for Obamacare: $300 a month premiums for young.... WASHINGTON — The No. 1 question about President Barack Obama's health care law is whether consumers will be able to afford the coverage. Now the answer is coming in. The biggest study yet of premiums posted by states finds that the sticker.... More

An inside look at Google's data-driven job interview process. If you interview for a job at Google, don’t expect the person making the hiring decision to be your prospective boss. When it comes to evaluating job candidates, “what we’ve found is you’re much more objective if you understand the.... More

Albuquerque becomes latest focal point in abortion wars. ALBUQUERQUE — At the New Mexico Holocaust and Intolerance Museum, three dozen people, many of them teenagers, arrived last month without warning. Wearing T-shirts that said “Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust,” they demanded that the.... More

Clinton urges Americans to sign up for health care exchanges. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — He chose his home state as the venue, and did not refrain from ticking off several problems he saw with the law. But former President Bill Clinton on Wednesday made a meticulous, if wonkish, case for Americans of all.... More

Privacy groups ask F.T.C. to block Facebook policy changes. A coalition of six major consumer privacy groups has asked the Federal Trade Commission to block coming changes to Facebook’s privacy policies that they say would make it easier for the social network to use personal data about its users,.... More

Oral infections causing more hospitalizations. Left untreated, a serious tooth abscess can eventually kill. In 2007, Deamonte Driver, a 12-year-old boy in Maryland, died after bacteria from an abscessed tooth spread to his brain. The case drew widespread media attention, and his is the.... More

With change coming, Aetna targets employers. AS the country marches toward a new health insurance system, insurance companies have spent millions on consumer advertising to position themselves as health care companies. But because a majority of Americans are insured through their.... More

Auto sales sizzle in cool economy. Auto sales are surging across the country, touching off a virtuous cycle of healthy competition, job-creating investment and high-tech innovation that stands apart from much of the still-sputtering economy. With numbers due out Wednesday,.... More

For workers and the economy, autumn could be scary. The U.S. economy looks headed for a rough autumn, with slowdown threats looming from the housing market, the Middle East and Washington. Oil and gasoline prices are rising and could shoot up further if Western countries launch military strikes.... More

Schools try new strategies to battle college drinking. The bars near the University of Virginia were packed on graduation day, seniors in billowing black gowns drinking away their final few hours before entering the real world. It was 7 a.m. Waiters and bartenders, many of whom had worked until.... More

U.S. gays face challenges serving abroad. Austin Watkins had reason to celebrate when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a key portion of the Defense of Marriage Act, marking a breakthrough in gay rights and making his husband eligible for federal benefits everywhere in the United.... More

Life expectancy grows for women age 50 and up. Life expectancy for women who live to age 50 is going up around the world, but poor and middle-income countries could easily make greater gains, according to a new World Health Organization report. Countries should focus on lowering blood.... More

Field-testing the math-apps. LAWRENCE, Mass. — Elias was shy at first. “He’s 4,” his teacher whispered when he would not say his age. He made no sound as his peers rushed to the tables with the iPads. When a friend grabbed the device to take his photo, he covered.... More

Expecting the best yields results in Massachusetts. BRAINTREE, Mass. — Conventional wisdom and popular perception hold that American students are falling further and further behind in science and math achievement. The statistics from this state tell a different story. More

Applying new rigor in studying education What works in science and math education? Until recently, there had been few solid answers — just guesses and hunches, marketing hype and extrapolations from small pilot studies. But now, a little-known office in the Education Department is.... More

Googling yourself takes on a whole new meaning. Here’s what you see if you look at my face: a skinny titanium headband stretched across my forehead. It looks like a futuristic pair of sunglasses, minus the lenses. On my right-hand side there’s a computer, a metal frame with a small,.... More

Singles become doubles This last July, on a searingly hot day, as the tennis player Andy Murray closed in on a historic sporting achievement — to be the first British man to win a Wimbledon singles title since Fred Perry in 1936 — the BBC cameras kept.... More

Gay and married couples in new land of taxation. It’s now official: same-sex married couples across the country are allowed to check one of the “married” boxes on their federal tax returns, even if their own state doesn’t recognize their union. More

Poverty makes it harder to make good decisions, study finds. Poverty consumes so much mental energy that people struggling to make ends meet often have little brainpower left for anything else, leaving them more susceptible to bad decisions that can perpetuate their situation, according to a new study. More

Experiment allows man to use his mind to control another's actions. So it turns out a bit of mind control might be possible after all. Scientists had already shown that a human could send an electronic brain signal to a rat, prompting it to wiggle its tail. Now, two University of Washington researchers say.... More

Gay marriages get recognition from the I.R.S. WASHINGTON — All same-sex couples who are legally married will be recognized as such for federal tax purposes, even if the state where they live does not recognize their union, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service said.... More

E-cigarette maker's ads echo tobacco's heyday. Electronic cigarettes may be a creation of the early 21st century, but critics of the devices say manufacturers are increasingly borrowing marketing tactics that are more reminiscent of the heady days of tobacco in the mid-1900s. More

New neighbor's agenda: white power takeover. LEITH, N.D. — The bearded man with thinning, gray-and-bleach-blond hair flapping down his neck first appeared in this tiny agricultural town last year, quietly and inconspicuously roaming the crackly dirt roads. More

Savers are more attractive dating material than spenders. Behaving like Scrooge is typically not the best way to win points with a date. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be counting every penny. It turns out that many love-seekers think savers are actually more attractive than spenders. More

Heat wins: Minneapolis cancels schools without air conditioning. Worried about the health of students and teachers in stifling classrooms, Minneapolis school officials canceled classes Thursday and Friday in its 27 buildings without air conditioning. Wednesday’s decision came after three days of shuffling.... More

Republican-led states find new ways to thwart Obama's health law. Several Republican-led states at the forefront of the campaign to undermine President Obama’s health-care law have come up with new ways to try to thwart it, refusing to enforce consumer protections, for example, and restricting federally.... More

Saluting a dream, and adapting it for a new era. WASHINGTON — President Obama stepped into the space on Wednesday where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once stood, summoning his iconic dream of a colorblind society in a celebration of a half-century of progress and a call to arms for.... More

In Congress, a bid to undo dialysis cuts. WASHINGTON — Eight months ago, Congress ordered the Obama administration to eliminate a stark example of federal government waste: more than $500 million a year in excessive drug payments being sent to dialysis clinics nationwide. More

Rise in thyroid cancer diagnoses is challenged by Mayo researchers. Overdiagnosis of thyroid cancer in the United States could be causing thousands of patients to receive costly and unnecessary procedures that won’t increase the quality or length of their lives, say Mayo Clinic doctors, who recommend a new.... More

A half-century later, economic gulf between blacks and whites persists. Even as racial barriers have tumbled and the nation has grown wealthier and better educated, the economic disparities separating blacks and whites remain as wide as they were when marchers assembled on the Mall in 1963. More

Bring your lunch to work. There are few brown-baggers in the building where I work. This is not because the food in the neighborhood is so great (it isn’t), or because the cafeteria is Google-like (it isn’t), but because many people are either “too busy” or too.... More

Spices link to food ills prompts changes in farming. IDUKKI, India — Spices grown in the mist-shrouded Western Ghats here have fueled wars, fortunes and even the discovery of continents, and for thousands of years farmers harvested them in the same traditional ways. Until now. More

Death panels: this time, maybe not so scary. Give Representative Earl Blumenauer, an nine-term Democrat from Oregon, credit for two things. First, a sense of humor: He began an op-ed piece he wrote for The New York Times a few years back with, “I didn’t mean to kill Grandma.” He.... More

Maximizing shareholder value: the goal that changed corporate America. ENDICOTT, N.Y. — This town in the hills of Upstate New York is best known as the birthplace of IBM, one of the country’s most iconic companies. But there remain only hints of that storied past. The main street, once swarming with.... More

Wave of retirements hitting federal workforce. A wave of retirements by senior federal employees has begun rolling across the government as aging baby boomers who held on to their jobs during the economic downturn are increasingly calling it quits. With retirement accounts on the rebound,.... More

Older workers, laid off, encounter bias. RIDGEWOOD, N.J. — In September 2012, it appeared that the world was John Fugazzie’s frozen oyster. He was in charge of dairy and frozen foods for the A.&P. supermarket chain, making $125,000 a year. He was also a guest that month at a.... More

In Chicago, extra eyes to provide safe passage on way to school. CHICAGO — The first day of school in one neighborhood on this city’s far South Side brought a parade of security workers in neon vests, police officers on patrol, an idling city fire truck and, briefly, a police helicopter hovering above.... More

At charter schools, teachers have short careers by choice. HOUSTON — Tyler Dowdy just started his third year of teaching at YES Prep West, a charter school here. He figures now is a good time to explore his next step, including applying for a supervisory position at the school. More

School security: front offices now the first line of defense. Roslyn Road Elementary in Barrington, Illinois is buttoned down about as tightly as a school can be these days, with a video surveillance system, buzzer-equipped doors and a driver's license scanner that checks visitors against a sex offender.... More

Desperate Calif. city looks to use 'eminent domain' to seize loans to ease.... SAN FRANCISCO — When the mayor of Richmond, Calif., and a gaggle of activists and homeowners showed up at the Wells Fargo Bank headquarters in downtown San Francisco this month, they were on a mission to speak with the bank's chief executive.... More

Disconnect Kids makes managing online privacy easy. Kids growing up in a digital age have dealt with a lot of things their parents didn’t — including learning how to navigate their privacy online. To help them, an anti-tracking start-up called Disconnect has released a kid-focused app that.... More

Baby boomers: lock down a caregiver now; huge shortage expected. Americans should expect an enormous shortage in caregivers for older people in the coming decades, with a dearth of friends and family members available to care for the baby-boom generation as it ages, according to a report released Monday by.... More

Making the choice to halt at the door of citizenship. Jonathan Wajskol, an Italian graphic designer who moved to the United States about three decades ago, has a life with the hallmarks of an immigrant success story: graduate studies at an American university; a successful international firm with.... More

After six budget showdowns, big government is mostly unchanged. After 21 / 2 years of budget battles, this is what the federal government looks like now: It is on pace, this year, to spend $3.455 trillion. That figure is down from 2010 — the year that worries about government spending helped bring on.... More

State officials scramble to set up health-care system. With a key deadline approaching, state officials across the country are scrambling to get the Affordable Care Act’s complex computer systems up and running, reviewing contingency plans and, in some places, preparing for delays. More

Teacher-parent partnerships begin at home. The girls just returned from a trip to Maine, and now they were in the living room of their St. Paul home, listening as a teacher asked them and their parents a few friendly questions. What’d they been up to this summer? Having fun?.... More

Employers weigh paying workers for good health. Marjorie Saporu is one reason why employers are starting to reward workers based on their health. When the administrative assistant learned her blood pressure prevented her from receiving a maximum break on her company’s health insurance, she.... More

Cyberschools grow, fueling new concerns. The number of full-time cyberschools serving Texas public school students will double in the coming school year despite a history of lackluster performance and a new law limiting the number of online courses that public school students are.... More

Despite better times for some, no recovery for black worker. On a sweltering day in late July, the Rev. Martin Rafanan, a St. Louis, Mo., labor organizer, led hundreds of service-industry workers, most of them African American, on a legally protected 24-hour strike. The strike was not only a St. Louis.... More

After veteran's suicide, his family has a new mission: improve VA services. Shortly before his death on June 10, Army veteran Daniel Somers wrote a note for his family, asking his wife, Angel, to share it as she saw fit. “I am left with basically nothing,” he typed on his laptop at their Phoenix townhouse. “Too.... More

A guessing game for taxpayers on what they owe. WHEN it comes to income taxes, my wife and I try to pay exactly what we owe. And by this I mean we try to calculate what we need to pay during the year so we do not overpay. We would rather owe a bit more in April than find out we are getting a.... More

Despite enormous strides, minorities still face barriers, President says. SCRANTON, Pa. — President Obama declared on Friday that the United States had made “enormous strides” in race relations since the March on Washington 50 years ago, but said “institutional barriers” for African-Americans and other.... More

To those who marched on Washington 50 years ago, progress seems fitful. WASHINGTON — When Daniel R. Smith was born dirt poor more than three-quarters of a century ago, there were only about 20 other blacks in his small Connecticut town. His own father had been born a slave in Virginia in 1862. Mr. Smith served as.... More

Federal budget to fight wildfires runs dry. For the second straight year, the federal government has run through its budget for fighting wildfires amid a grueling, deadly season and will be forced to move $600 million from other funds, some of which help prevent fires. More

Citing Obamacare costs, some local governments are cutting hours. Many cash-strapped cities and counties facing the prospect of shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars in new health-care costs under the Affordable Care Act are opting instead to reduce the number of hours their part-time employees work. More

Computer bugs and squirrels: a history of Nasdaq's woes. It was yet another technical difficulty for Nasdaq. On Thursday, when a problem at the Nasdaq stock market halted trading in all Nasdaq-listed stocks, it brought back memories of past problems at the exchange, which trades shares of some of the.... More

What does Obama want to do with college costs? President Barack Obama is pitching an overhaul of federal student aid that would link dollars to the Education Department's ratings of colleges and universities. His proposal would give students at better-rated schools cheaper loans or bigger.... More

How will women's issues fare in D.C. and overseas? WASHINGTON — Catherine M. Russell’s portfolio includes half the population of the planet, roughly 3.5 billion women. But working with the 70,000 employees of the State Department to make women’s issues a permanent priority, she said, may.... More

At the chiropractor, well-adjusted pets. One morning last August, Mary Arabe’s 9-year-old gray and black tiger cat, Leo, came home from a night out exploring with a severe limp and an elbow swollen three times its normal size. He was clearly in pain; Ms. Arabe thought he had.... More

Georgia school employee calmed shooter. DECATUR, Ga. — The 911 tapes from a frightening standoff and shooting at an Atlanta-area school show how a school employee's calm demeanor and kind approach helped end the ordeal without any injuries. More

No clarity from Fed on stimulus, upsetting Wall Street. The confusion over exactly when the Federal Reserve will begin scaling back its huge economic stimulus efforts only deepened Wednesday, with the release of a summary of the deliberations at the central bank’s last meeting in late July. More

After sentencing, Manning says he is female. Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army private who pleaded guilty to leaking government files to WikiLeaks and was sentenced on Wednesday to 35 years in military prison, said in a statement Thursday that “I am female” and wants to begin living life.... More

Obama's plan aims to rate colleges on affordability. President Obama plans to announce a set of ambitious proposals on Thursday aimed at making colleges more accountable and affordable by rating them and ultimately linking those ratings to financial aid. More

Hawaii next for gay marriage push. Hawaii state House Democrats will meet this week to gauge whether they can come up with the votes to pass a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. If there is sufficient support, and if legislative leaders can agree on language that would.... More

Hawaii next for gay marriage push. Hawaii state House Democrats will meet this week to gauge whether they can come up with the votes to pass a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. If there is sufficient support, and if legislative leaders can agree on language that would.... More

Obama to offer plans to ease burden of paying for college. WASHINGTON — President Obama will offer a series of proposals this week aimed at making college more affordable by reshaping the way Americans pay for higher education, he said in an e-mail to supporters on Tuesday. More

Health costs climb moderately, survey says. Premiums for employer-provided health insurance have increased by relatively modest amounts this year, according to a new survey, a further sign that once-torrid health care inflation has abated for now. More

Tacking health care costs onto California farm produce. HURON, Calif. — Farm labor contractors across California, the nation’s biggest agricultural engine, are increasingly nervous about a provision of the Affordable Care Act that will require hundreds of thousands of field workers to be covered.... More

Facial scanning is making gains in surveillance. WASHINGTON — The federal government is making progress on developing a surveillance system that would pair computers with video cameras to scan crowds and automatically identify people by their faces, according to newly disclosed.... More

Using technology to keep Fido fit and happy. Hamster-scaled stereo speakers. Headphones for cats. A fitness and sleep tracker for dogs. With pet owners in the U.S. spending $50 billion on their pets annually, it might seem as if any of these products could be on pet store shelves right.... More

Minnesota's new 'Dream Act' law makes college possible for immigrant.... Alex Gonzalez has long known that he wants to finish his college career at the University of Minnesota. But despite living in the Twin Cities area since he was 6 years old, he didn't expect to pay the U’s in-state price. That’s because.... More

D.C. traditional public school teacher pay is higher than charters. Teachers in the District’s traditional public schools earn more than their counterparts at nearly every D.C. charter school, according to a Washington Post review of teacher salaries across the city, with many city teachers earning salaries.... More

Climate panel cites near certainty on warming. An international panel of scientists has found with near certainty that human activity is the cause of most of the temperature increases of recent decades, and warns that sea levels could conceivably rise by more than three feet by the end of.... More

Children lost in war zones and disasters find their families with an app. Entrepreneurs often talk about the “pain points” their new app or service will ease, but as it has been repeatedly pointed out, the problems they solve are more often than not the problems of affluent and hyper-connected 20-somethings in.... More

Christie will sign bill that bans gay conversion therapy. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) on Monday will announce that he plans to sign a bill that will ban the practice of trying to convert gay children to a heterosexual lifestyle, according to an aide. More

Rapid rehousing: a new way to head off homelessness. At a little after 7 on an August morning, Contessa Allen-Starks puts on her beige scrubs, pours coffee into a plastic foam cup, locks the door to her apartment and hurries to the A4 bus stop on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SW for an hour-long.... More

Most of U.S. is wired, but millions aren't plugged in. The Obama administration has poured billions of dollars into expanding the reach of the Internet, and nearly 98 percent of American homes now have access to some form of high-speed broadband. But tens of millions of people are still on the.... More

A call for aid, not laws, to help women in Italy. ROME — Responding to the persistent problem of violence against women, Prime Minister Enrico Letta this month announced “very harsh, very tough” measures to counter domestic abuse and what he called “femicide,” the killing of women.... More

U.S. workers are grounded by deep spending cuts. WASHINGTON — Geological visits to monitor volcanoes in Alaska have been scaled back. The defense secretary is traveling to Afghanistan two times a year instead of the usual four. For the first time in nearly three decades, NASA pulled out of.... More

A lesson in healing at home. KLAWOCK, ALASKA – Kecia Weatherwax is convinced her son was healed not just by surgeons but also by the misty archipelago she sailed to all those years ago: an Alaskan village where a “mad Indian,” as she describes herself, would be.... More

Scanning the entire Internet in an hour. Until recently, scanning the entire Internet, with its billions of unique addresses, was a slow and labor-intensive process. For example, in 2010 the Electronic Frontier Foundation conducted a scan to gather data on the use of encryption.... More

For Obama, economic equality the path to racial justice. President Obama has only occasionally used his bully pulpit to confront racial inequality in America, even if race inherently has been a backdrop of his tenure as the first black president. He has, however, made fighting economic inequality a.... More

In all flavors, cigars draw in young smokers. BALTIMORE — At Everest Greenish Grocery, a brightly lit store on a faded corner of this city, nothing is more popular than a chocolate-flavored little cigar. They are displayed just above the Hershey bars along with their colorful cigarillo.... More

Master's degree is new frontier of study online. Next January, the Georgia Institute of Technology plans to offer a master’s degree in computer science through massive open online courses for a fraction of the on-campus cost, a first for an elite institution. If it even approaches its goal.... More

Decline in childhood obesity linked to motivation and means. If you had asked Christian Prado Diaz a year ago about his favorite foods, the preschooler would have listed some greasy delight from Wendy’s, where his mother works the drive-through lane. Today? “Arroz!” the 4-year-old proclaimed..... More

On Martha's Vineyard, a stark look at income inequality. CHILMARK, MASS. — Once a month, on a street of picture-perfect clapboard houses, white picket fences and fluttering American flags, families gather in this wealthy Massachusetts enclave for a lifeline. They walk through an unmarked door and.... More

One dip into a 401(k) often leads to another. Some people can’t seem to stop at just one. After workers borrow money from their 401(k) retirement account, they may find that it becomes easier to come back for another loan — and perhaps even another. And yet another one after that. More

Layoffs taboo, Japan's workers are sent to the boredom room. TAGAJO, Japan — Shusaku Tani is employed at the Sony plant here, but he doesn’t really work. For more than two years, he has come to a small room, taken a seat and then passed the time reading newspapers, browsing the Web and poring over.... More

Victim's dilemma: 911 calls can bring eviction. NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The police had warned Lakisha Briggs: one more altercation at her rented row house here, one more call to 911, and they would force her landlord to evict her. They could do so under the town’s “nuisance property”.... More

Apps promise to teach babies to read and count, but evidence is scant. Fisher-Price promises its Laugh & Learn Apptivity mobile software will teach babies letters, numbers, shapes and colors. And when a consumer group challenged those claims, the toy industry’s trade association decided it was going to.... More

Minnesota vendors queue up for gay wedding business. It’s no secret that weddings are a bonanza for photographers, florists, jewelers, stylists and limo drivers. Now vendors are hastening to cash in on same-sex marriage, legal as of two weeks ago in Minnesota. Project 515, a gay rights.... More

Giving troubled youth a chance to leap and soar. LEEDS, England — Trey was nervous. He tapped his bare feet on the studio floor and pulled the zipper on his indigo jumpsuit up and down so fast it sang. He was talking a lot. He was talking too much. “Trey, please,” said Helen Linsell,.... More

"Navigators" seen as crucial to success of Obamacare. OAKTON, Va. — Cyndy Dailey held a job fair at her nonprofit agency here last weekend, with a major caveat: she did not yet know if she could hire. Like many organizations across the country, Ms. Daily’s agency, Northern Virginia Family.... More

Focus on race is at core of ruling in NYPD stop-and-frisk issue. The long-awaited decision declaring the New York Police Department's use of stop-and-frisk tactics unconstitutional was mostly expected; even the staunchest defenders of the practice anticipated that Judge Shira A. Scheindlin would find the.... More

Back away from that soda; even moderate levels of sugar could hurt your.... Sugar, even at moderate levels, could be toxic to your health — or at least to your sex life, a new study says. Scientists at the University of Utah looked at how sugar affected mice and found that the mouse equivalent of just three sugary.... More

Study: half who now buy own health insurance will get tax credits under.... WASHINGTON — About half the people who now buy their own health insurance — and potentially would face higher premiums next year under President Barack Obama's health care law — would qualify for federal tax credits to offset rate shock,.... More

A simple device to detect concussions. The start this month of high school and college football seasons across the country renews concerns about the issue of repeated head impacts and how to manage or, preferably, avoid concussions. Unfortunately, the resources to deal with the.... More

New York issues scorecards on teacher colleges. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has used data to rate restaurants, track the repair of potholes and close lackluster schools in New York City. Now he is bringing his results-oriented approach to an area far outside his usual purview: teacher.... More

To judge sleep aids, U.S. looks at drowsy driving in the morning. The first test for a new sleep drug is — unsurprisingly — how safely it puts people to sleep. Now comes a second test: how safely it lets people wake up. The Food and Drug Administration is taking heightened interest in the issue, as new.... More

Surge of brain activity may explain near-death activity, study says. It’s called a near-death experience, but the emphasis is on “near.” The heart stops, you feel yourself float up and out of your body. You glide toward the entrance of a tunnel, and a searing bright light envelops your field of vision. More

Is a new iPhone coming this Fall? SAN JOSE, Calif. - In a day of whiplash-inducing reports about Apple’s health and future, the most tantalizing tidbit to emerge from the blogosphere was a simple date: Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2013. That, according to a report in AllThingsD.... More

Autism's unexpected link to cancer genes. Researchers studying two seemingly unrelated conditions — autism and cancer — have unexpectedly converged on a surprising discovery. Some people with autism have mutated cancer or tumor genes that apparently caused their brain disorder. More

New laws, rising costs, create surge in supersized hospitals. Hospitals across the nation are being swept up in the biggest wave of mergers since the 1990s, a development that is creating giant hospital systems that could one day dominate American health care and drive up costs. More

Limit on costs for consumers is delayed in health care law. In another setback for President Obama’s health care initiative, the administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care. More

In his second term, Obama becomes bolder on the environment. President Obama’s environmental policies are likely to play a prominent role in defining his second term, even as the budget, immigration and health care still dominate the current political debate. More

Cramming for stardom at Korea's K-Pop schools. SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Chae-young attends cram school five evenings a week, toiling deep into the night. But unlike most young South Koreans who spend hours at special schools to polish their English and math, she studies slide steps and.... More

LinkedIn connects big data, human resources. MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. — Every second, more than two more people join LinkedIn’s network of 238 million members. They are head hunters in search of talent. They are the talent in search of a job. And sometimes, the career site for the.... More

Dr. Google will see you now. FEELING good today? You are not alone. We’re approaching Aug. 11, which is, excluding Christmastime, the happiest day of the year in this country. Or at least the day with the lowest rate of depression, according to our Google searches. More

U.S. companies thrive as workers fall behind. AMERICAN companies are more profitable than ever — and more profitable than we thought they were before the government revised the national income accounts last week. Wage earners are making less than we thought, in part because the.... More

Baby boomers reversing trend; choosing life in cities. Robert Solymossy doesn’t remember when he last gassed up his one remaining car. His other two cars are blissfully consigned to memory, along with his lawn, his driveway, and “a lifetime’s worth of furniture” accumulated over the 23.... More

Sometimes second best makes a better role model. Recently the Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who was just suspended for 211 games for steroid use, proclaimed that he still wanted to be a role model, despite “all the noise.” Here’s something to think about. It may not be A-Rod’s.... More

High blood sugar linked to dementia. People with diabetes face an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, a connection scientists and physicians have worried about for years. They still can’t explain it. More

The weather god of Oklahoma City I had heard stories about the special powers of Gary England, Tornado Alley’s most famous weatherman: how he had tracked storms, back in the day, from a tiny attic office with a primitive radar repurposed from the nose of an airplane; More

The business of financing hate groups. The major credit card companies position themselves as being quite broad-minded: observing gay pride month, creating a Shariah-compliant credit card, celebrating diversity among employees. But the companies also do business with hate groups,.... More

Some girls have been married 60 times by the time they turn 18. When young girls are sold into marriage, as 38,000 are every day, they can expect a life with no education and few opportunities, little public autonomy outside of their adult husband's control and an increased risk of death from pregnancy or.... More

"Yes week-end" - France's work-life war. The battle over Sunday trading in Paris is part of a growing fight in France between the champions of deregulation and those defending the 35-hour working week. More

A $147 million signal of faith in Atlanta's public schools. ATLANTA — The most expensive public high school ever built in Georgia opens Wednesday in an old I.B.M. office building. With 11 stories, a 900-car parking deck and views fit for a corporate executive, the school, North Atlanta High, looks.... More

Poor children show decline in obesity. After years of growing concern about obesity among children, federal researchers have found the clearest evidence yet that the epidemic may be turning a corner in young children from low-income families. More

The opt-out generation wants back in. Sheilah O’Donnel tells herself that her new home, a townhouse in a development in Chevy Chase, Md., just a stone’s throw from a Safeway, isn’t really all that bad. Sure, it’s near a gas station. And the front window, with its cheerily.... More

List of nation's top party and sober schools is published. IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The Princeton Review released its 2014 edition of "The Best 378 Colleges" book Monday, which includes the lists of the Top 20 party schools and the Top 20 sober schools. More

Homeless running group helps men reach their goals. It’s just after 7 a.m. as a small band of runners sets out on W. 7th Street in downtown St. Paul, pumping their arms and legs in unison. They’re members of Next Steps — a running club for homeless people. For more than a year now, the.... More

Whooping cough linked to shorter life expectancy. People who are born during whooping cough epidemics and survive them are more likely to die prematurely later in life, according to a new study analyzing 158 years of Swedish population data. More

Chicago sees pension crisis drawing near. CHICAGO — Corporations are moving in, and housing prices are looking better across the region. There has been a slight uptick in population. But a crushing problem lurks beneath the signs of economic recovery in Chicago: one of the most.... More

To ensure bone health, start early. Most people don’t start thinking about the health of their bones until midlife or later, by which time it can be too late to do very much to protect against serious bone loss and resulting fractures. Researchers who study bone health say.... More

Minnesota working to break down cultural barriers to breast-feeding. Breast-feeding her newborn seemed the right choice for ReaShondra Walker two years ago, but she got little support from those closest to her. Her sister said it would be painful. Her mother “didn’t talk about such things.” The baby’s.... More

Women scarce in the top posts of Los Angeles. LOS ANGELES — There are 1.9 million women in Los Angeles. The two senators from California are women, as is the state’s attorney general. But this city, a bastion of progressive politics, has a curious distinction these days. Only one.... More

Warnings on football helmets combat injury and liability. Even by the alarmist standards of many product warnings, the labels on the backs of the football helmets are bracingly blunt: “No helmet system can protect you from serious brain and/or neck injuries including paralysis or death. To avoid.... More

'Buy local' gets creative PITTSBURGH — For years, Barbara Johnstone, a professor of linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University here, bought shares in a C.S.A. — a community-supported agriculture program — and picked up her occasional bags of tubers or tomatoes or.... More

Health care law raises pressure on public unions. Cities and towns across the country are pushing municipal unions to accept cheaper health benefits in anticipation of a component of the Affordable Care Act that will tax expensive plans starting in 2018. More

More students taking both ACT and SAT. As if applying to college isn’t taxing enough, the process seems to have been ratcheted up another notch. Ambitious high school students are no longer content with just one college admissions test. More

Hip and knee replacements command inflated prices in U.S. WARSAW, Ind. — Michael Shopenn’s artificial hip was made by a company based in this remote town, a global center of joint manufacturing. But he had to fly to Europe to have it installed. Mr. Shopenn, 67, an architectural photographer and.... More

Economy still years away from full recovery. WASHINGTON – The number of federal workers forced to work shorter hours soared this summer — to 199,000 in July, from 55,000 a year earlier — in a sign of the problems that federal budget policy is causing for the economy. More

A star philosopher falls, and a debate over sexism is set off. Ever since Socrates’ wife was painted as a jealous shrew by one of his pupils, women have had it tough in philosophy. Thinkers from Aristotle to Kant questioned whether women were fully capable of reason. More

Missouri citizens face obstacles to coverage. JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Looking for the new health insurance marketplace, set to open in this state in two months, is like searching for a unicorn. The marketplace, or exchange, being established by the federal government under President.... More

Colorado presses for uninsured to enroll. Television commercials have already run suggesting that buying health coverage through the state’s new insurance market, Connect for Health Colorado, will feel like winning the World Series. More

The airlines' endless quest for better boarding. DALLAS (AP) — Getting people on and off an airplane quickly is so complicated that even an astrophysicist couldn't figure it out. Jason Steffen, a research fellow atNorthwestern University, normally contemplates things such as axion-like.... More

Detroit slashes pay for some police, firefighter unions. About 1,200 Detroit police lieutenants and sergeants and about 400 Detroit firefighters will see a 10 percent pay cut in their paychecks on September 16, a spokesman for Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr said on Thursday. More

Solid job gains in July could set stage for stronger economic growth in.... WASHINGTON — Robust hiring in July would mark a fourth straight month of solid gains, an encouraging sign for a U.S. economy that is still struggling with high unemployment. Economists predict that employers added 183,000 jobs — a figure.... More

Republicans refuel effort to cripple health care law. WASHINGTON — With the House poised to vote Friday on yet another bill to cripple President Obama’s health care law, the question arises: Why do Republicans persist in their so-far futile efforts? Democrats have many theories. Republicans.... More

Theory on pain is driving rules for abortions. It challenges four decades of constitutional doctrine and is based on disputed scientific theories. Yet a push to ban abortion at 20 weeks after conception, on the theory that the fetus can feel pain at that point, has emerged as a potent new.... More

Gay couples face new legal considerations. Of Minnesota’s 10,207 same-sex couples, about half will marry in the first three years, according to the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA’s law school focused on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues. Some 3,165 of those.... More

Minnesota weddings start a new day for gay marriage. The streets outside Minneapolis City Hall were filled with newly-wedded gay and lesbian couples reveling in their new marital status Thursday morning while inside dozens more waited their turn in lines that lasted until dawn. More

U.S. jobless claims drop to 5-1/2 year low. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell unexpectedly last week, touching a 5-1/2 year low, suggesting a steadily improving labor market. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 19,000 to a.... More

In Missouri, race complicates a transfer to better schools. When the Missouri Supreme Court upheld a law in June allowing students from failing school districts to transfer to good ones, Harriett Gladney saw a path to a better education for her 9-year-old daughter. But then she watched television news.... More

An unusual feat in Congress: student loan bill breezes on. Something pretty rare happened in Congress on Wednesday: it approved and sent to President Obama a major piece of public policy by an overwhelming bipartisan margin. The feat was even more notable because the legislation, which created a new.... More

Senate confirms Obama's choices for National Labor Relations Board. WASHINGTON — The National Labor Relations Board had five confirmed members for the first time in more than a decade Tuesday after the Senate took a series of votes approving a full slate of nominees. More

U.S. economy expands at surprising rate. WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy grew from April through June at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.7 percent, as businesses spent more and the federal government cut less. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that growth improved from a.... More

Warrantless cell phone tracking is upheld. In a significant victory for law enforcement, a federal appeals court on Tuesday said that government authorities could extract historical location data directly from telecommunications carriers without a search warrant. More

Efforts to recruit poor students lag at some elite colleges. With affirmative action under attack and economic mobility feared to be stagnating, top colleges profess a growing commitment to recruiting poor students. But a comparison of low-income enrollment shows wide disparities among the most.... More

Over a million are denied bank accounts for past errors. Mistakes like a bounced check or a small overdraft have effectively blacklisted more than a million low-income Americans from the mainstream financial system for as long as seven years as a result of little-known private databases that are used.... More

Say on executive pay: thumbs up or thumb in the eye. The chance to say “yea” or “nay” to executive pay may not be driving down CEO compensation, but it’s forcing corporate board members to pay much closer attention to their shareholders. More

Apps that know what you want before you do. SAN FRANCISCO — In Hollywood, there are umbrella holders. Outside corner offices, there are people who know exactly how much cream to pour in the boss’s coffee. In British castles, royals have their valets. More

A city invokes seizure laws to save homes. The power of eminent domain has traditionally worked against homeowners, who can be forced to sell their property to make way for a new highway or shopping mall. But now the working-class city of Richmond, Calif., hopes to use the same legal.... More

Concerns about dementia screening. Marie Theriault started having trouble with her hands more than three years ago. She was the director of a day care center, but suddenly she couldn’t change diapers or tie shoelaces. She started dropping things. More

Program compelling outpatient treatment for mental illness is working,.... For some people with severe mental illness, life is a cycle of hospitalization, skipped medication, decline and then rehospitalization. They may deny they have psychiatric disorders, refuse treatment and cascade into out-of-control behavior.... More

Reinvented in his 60s after 26 jobless months. When I last wrote about Michael Blattman, it was August 2009, he was 58 years old, and had been unemployed for 18 months. Like a lot of baby boomers during the Great Recession, he had worked his whole adult life and could not believe this was.... More

Working class whites gloomy about the future amid rising income gaps,.... Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press.... More

Firms need IT workers but stumble in hiring. Companies in Minnesota and across the country are struggling to hire technology workers, and it’s partly their own fault. All sorts of industries are shifting in ways that suddenly require tech expertise. Businesses have found themselves.... More

Understanding eczema to treat it. Summer is both a blessing and curse for millions of people afflicted with a common chronic skin condition called eczema. The dry, red and usually intolerably itchy patches often recede when the air is warm and damp and skin is exposed more.... More

Detroit looks to health care law to help reduce costs. As Detroit enters the federal bankruptcy process, the city is proposing a controversial plan for paring some of the $5.7 billion it owes in retiree health costs: pushing many of those too young to qualify for Medicare out of city-run coverage.... More

Unemployed and older, and facing a jobless future. I WAS recently talking to a friend at a party whose husband — in his 60s — has been unemployed for more than two years. While there are many challenges, she said, one of the hardest things is trying to balance hope with reality. More

A state-by-state guide to evading the sales tax. It’s tax-free holiday time again—those special few days each year when what you see on the price tag is what you actually pay at the register. So if you’re planning on doing any back-to-school shopping, you may want to sit tight until.... More

FDA says importers must audit food safety. WASHINGTON — More than two years after Congress passed a landmark law meant to prevent the importation of contaminated food that sickens Americans, the Food and Drug Administration proposed rules on Friday that for the first time put the main.... More

Why smokers still smoke. GIVEN how hazardous it is to their health, why do smokers continue to smoke? It’s not that they are all hopeless addicts. Many smokers are capable of quitting. It’s not that they are ignorant. Studies show that smokers are at least as.... More

A start-up aims to bring financial planning to the masses. It’s an unfortunate fact: the people who are most in need of honest financial advice often cannot afford it, or they don’t realize that their so-called adviser isn't an adviser at all, but a salesman. If Alexa von Tobel has her way,.... More

High schools with late start times help teens, but schedules can conflict. NEW YORK — Quinn Cooney of Mill Creek, Wash., is excited about starting high school in September, but she's not looking forward to waking up at 5:30 a.m. to arrive on time. Classes for ninth-graders start at 7:30 a.m., 45 minutes earlier than.... More

E-mail 'phishing' attacks by hackers grow in number, intensity. At least 2 million people received the email May 16 notifying them that an order they had just made on "Wallmart's" website was being processed, though none of them had done any such thing. Still, thousands of people clicked on the link in the.... More

HPV vaccine not reaching enough girls, CDC says. The very low vaccination rate for teenage girls against the human papillomavirus — the most common sexually transmitted infection and a principal cause of cervical cancer — did not improve at all from 2011 to 2012, and health officials on.... More

College enrollment declines as economy recovers. The long enrollment boom that swelled American colleges — and helped drive up their prices — is over, with grim implications for many schools. College enrollment fell 2 percent in 2012-13, the first significant decline since the 1990s,.... More

Arriving with anxiety, finding a sanctuary. HUNTINGDON, Tenn. — Hannah heard her mother’s muffled cries for help. They came from the bedroom, a sort of guesthouse that sat behind her grandparents’ home off a narrow winding road in the hills of West Tennessee. More

Study links heavy cellphone use with poor fitness. People who constantly exercise their thumbs by using their smartphones could ultimately be harming their physical health. A new study by researchers at Kent State University found a link between heavy cellphone use and reduced fitness levels.... More

Americans grow increasingly intolerant of extramarital affairs. Hester Prynne, data suggests, wouldn’t get much of a break today. More Americans tolerate things we formerly considered taboo, such as premarital sex, divorce and gay relationships. But there’s one glaring exception: We condemn adultery.... More

Death toll rises to 78 in Spain train disaster. SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain — A Spanish train that hurtled off the rails and smashed into a security wall as it rounded a bend was going so fast that carriages tumbled off the tracks like dominos, according to eyewitness accounts and video.... More

Ask Well: Leg cramp relief. Nighttime leg cramps are a common problem: As many as 6 in 10 adults report experiencing them at some time. But researchers are not sure what causes them. Sometimes they can be a sign of an underlying medical problem, like liver disease,.... More

Obama focuses on economy, vowing to help middle class. WARRENSBURG, Mo. — President Obama tried to move past months of debate over guns, surveillance and scandal on Wednesday and reorient his administration behind a program to lift a middling economy and help middle-class Americans who are stuck.... More

Same-sex marriage could be a boon for Minnesota's wedding industry. So, who’s the bride?” That’s the question Greg Leatherman has been asked while planning his wedding. But there is no bride. Leatherman is marrying his longtime partner, Brent Malley, in a few weeks, then having a celebration next summer. More

Police arrest principal of school in India where 23 children died. PATNA, India — The principal of a primary school in eastern India where 23 children died last week after eating lunch prepared with contaminated oil was arrested Wednesday, nine days after she went into hiding, police said. Meena Kumari fled.... More

Legacy on line in fierce drive on health law. Few things are more important to the White House this year than a successful health care rollout on Oct. 1, when millions of uninsured Americans will be required to obtain private health coverage in government-run marketplaces. Getting it right.... More

Students recall schools run like jails. After Alexander Chomakhidze and his family moved to the United States from Greece a few years ago, he became so despondent he started skipping school and even tried to kill himself. Worried, his parents sent him to Horizon Academy, a Utah.... More

Can you get too much exercise? Researchers from Uppsala University and other institutions examined the health records of almost 53,000 race participants and found that the more races someone had completed between 1989 and 1999 or the faster they had finished, the more likely.... More

Federal judge blocks new North Dakota abortion law. A federal judge in North Dakota on Monday temporarily blocked the state’s law banning abortions as early as six weeks after fertilization, calling the legislation “clearly unconstitutional.” The preliminary injunction from U.S. District.... More

Princeton researchers find evidence of age bias It turns out that a young Max and a middle-aged Max can get away with saying things that an old Max cannot. At least that is the conclusion of a new study by Princeton researchers aimed at measuring age discrimination, one of the toughest.... More

Federal report says heat was cause of train derailment. A federal report has pinpointed heat as the likely cause of last summer's fatal train derailment on a north suburban bridge after a stretch of track shifted out of alignment in triple-digit temperatures. Video showed a "track alignment anomaly" More

New data shows Google bigger than Facebook, Netflix and Twitter - combined. Google is now bigger than Facebook, Netflix and Twitter — combined. That’s according to new data from DeepField, an Internet analytics outfit, which based its research on anonymized “backbone traffic” — the stuff moving through the.... More

First day of parenting faces William and Kate after birth sparks global.... It's Day One of parenting for Prince William and Kate. After the excitement and fatigue and joy of childbirth — emotions shared with a nation — the young couple is expected to bring the prince home Tuesday. More

Young immigrants stage a risky border protest. NOGALES, Ariz. — Lizbeth Mateo paid her tuition Sunday for Santa Clara Law School, where classes begin next month. On Monday, she paused to send the school an email. "I'm letting them know I may not make it in time," she said. The reason for.... More

Poll: Immigration is a quandary for Republicans. Majorities of Americans support the two main pillars of immigration reform — increasing border security and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. But partisan, racial and ethnic divisions dampen overall public support for a.... More

Poll: Parents don't support many education policy changes. Most parents with children in public schools do not support recent changes in education policy, from closing low-performing schools to shifting public dollars to charter schools to private school vouchers, according to a new poll to be released.... More

After car plunged 40 feet from bridge, woman 'went from panic to calm.' The car went off the side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and into the water. It began to fill up, and the 22-year-old driver believed she was drowning. But Morgan Lake of Calvert County said she made the decision not to die in the water and told.... More

After a sprain, don't just walk it off. Whenever I see a woman walking (or trying to) in stilettos — skinny heels over 3 inches high — my first thought is, “There’s a sprained ankle waiting to happen.” An estimated 28,000 ankle injuries occur daily in the United States,.... More

Cries of betrayal as Detroit plans to cut pensions. Gloria Killebrew, 73, worked for the City of Detroit for 22 years and now spends her days caring for her husband, J. D., who has had three heart attacks and multiple kidney operations, the last of which left him needing dialysis three times a.... More

Location plays major role in climbing income ladder. Stacey Calvin spends almost as much time commuting to her job — on a bus, two trains and another bus — as she does working part-time at a day care center. She knows exactly where to board the train and which stairwells to use at the.... More

Amid Detroit bankruptcy, residents grapple with poverty and unemployment. DETROIT — Daniel Rice comes to the Michigan Works! job placement office almost every day for four or five hours, searching for a job he has had no luck finding in a city that has seemed in perpetual decline. On Friday, he found one listing,.... More

Police in India find toxic levels of pesticide in kids' lunch. PATNA, India — Police say samples of cooking oil and leftover food taken from an Indian school where 23 children died after eating lunch this past week were contaminated with "very toxic" levels of an agricultural pesticide. More

Frayed prospects, despite a degree. At a time when many job seekers complain that their résumés vanish into a black hole, Charles Wells managed to get a high-level recruiter at Ernst & Young to meet with him in person, twice. But the end result was disheartening: Mr. Wells.... More

President offers a personal take on Trayvon Martin case. After days of angry protests and mounting public pressure, President Obama summoned five of his closest advisers to the Oval Office on Thursday evening. It was time, he told them, for him to speak to the nation about the Trayvon Martin verdict,.... More

Law on racial diversity stirs Greenwich schools. GREENWICH, Conn. — Just a few minutes’ drive from the polo fields, the fieldstone walls guarding 10-acre estates and theGreenwich Country Day School, from which the elder George Bush graduated in 1937, is far denser terrain, where the homes.... More

Education proposal in House could replace 'no child left behind.' WASHINGTON — For the first time since No Child Left Behind, President George W. Bush’s signature education law, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support a dozen years ago, a bill seeking to rewrite the law came to the floor of the House.... More

Social media can be a great resource in the workplace. Using social networking such as Facebook and Twitter to stay in touch with people is faster and easier than the traditional face-to-face meeting, which boosted your career more than you might have imagined because 90% of communication comes.... More

State officials balk at defending laws they deem unconstitutional. Once state legislation is passed, it’s usually up to the governor and attorney general to see that the law is implemented. But in a number of high-profile cases around the country, top state officials are balking at defending laws on gay.... More

Detroit goes bankrupt; largest municipal filing in U.S. history. Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation’s history Thursday, marking a new low in a long decline that has left the U.S. automaking capital bleeding residents and revenue while rendering city services a mess. The city,.... More

Heroin overdoses soar in New England. PORTLAND, Me. — Heroin has been making an alarming comeback in the smaller cities and towns of New England. From quaint fishing villages on the Maine coast to the interior of the Great North Woods extending across Maine, New Hampshire and.... More

'Fruitvale Station' offers light instead of heat after Trayvon Martin case. Can a movie heal a nation? That’s the question raised by “Fruitvale Station,” a modest but astonishingly accomplished urban drama that arrives in Washington area theaters Friday as an eerie example of art not just imitating life, but.... More

At least 27 death penalty convictions may be faulty, says review. An unprecedented federal review of old criminal cases has uncovered as many as 27 death penalty convictions in which FBI forensic experts may have mistakenly linked defendants to crimes with exaggerated scientific testimony, U.S. officials said.... More

Dementia's signs may come early. The man complained of memory problems but seemed perfectly normal. No specialist he visited detected any decline. “He insisted that things were changing, but he aced all of our tests,” said Rebecca Amariglio, a neuropsychologist at Brigham.... More

Florida case spurs painful talks between black parents and their children. Tracey Wolff never had a problem with her 19-year-old son’s individualism: his “crazy” hair and unshaven face. But this week, his look suddenly seemed more worrying. When she thinks of Trayvon Martin and his cropped hair and smooth face,.... More

Racial disparities in life spans narrow, but persist. The gap in life expectancy between black and white Americans is at its narrowest since the federal government started systematically tracking it in the 1930s, but a difference of nearly four years remains, and federal researchers have detailed.... More

Under exchanges, New Yorkers will see health plan cost fall 50%. Individuals buying health insurance on their own will see their premiums tumble next year in New York State as changes under the federal health care law take effect, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Wednesday. More

Dementia rate is found to drop sharply with better health and education. A new study has found that dementia rates among people 65 and older in England and Wales have plummeted by 25 percent over the past two decades, to 6.2 percent from 8.3 percent, a trend that researchers say is probably occurring across.... More

29 schoolchildren die after eating free lunch in India. At least 20 children have died and more are sick after eating free meals at a primary school in eastern India, an official said Wednesday. Bihar state official Abhijit Sinha said another 27 children and the school cook have been hospitalized in Patna, the state capital. Ten of them are in serious.... More

With Zimmerman verdict, Obama faces challenge as first black president. President Obama’s history with the politics of race — his own, and the way it is lived in this country — has been both beneficial and vexing over the course of his public life. Racial identity was at the heart of his best-selling memoir,.... More

Fed chief calls Congress biggest obstacle to growth. WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said Wednesday that Congress is the largest obstacle to faster economic growth, and he warned that upcoming decisions about fiscal policy could once again undermine the.... More

Universities face a rising barrage of cyber attacks. America’s research universities, among the most open and robust centers of information exchange in the world, are increasingly coming under cyberattack, most of it thought to be from China, with millions of hacking attempts weekly. Campuses.... More

The federal office space of the future? GSA's new floor plan eschews.... The agency that manages 375 million square feet of federal office space is moving back to its newly renovated headquarters in downtown Washington, where its employees are finding that their personal real estate footprint has been radically.... More

Civil rights charges against Zimmerman would be difficult, Justice.... Current and former Justice Department officials said Monday that bringing civil rights charges against George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old in Florida, would be extremely difficult and may not.... More

Free ride to the U.S., with costly risk. At a makeshift church shelter beyond the industrial parks north of Mexico City, the train riders wait under a canvas tent, listening for a locomotive horn. They keep their shoes on and their backpacks zipped. The tracks outside run through.... More

2 new plans to upgrade Smartphones after a year. For devotees of new technology, the people who help set trends and chase the latest gadgets, the joy of buying a new smartphone has been met with an equally strong annoyance: long-term commitment. Now they are getting some overtures to avoid.... More

Last car plant brings Detroit hope and cash. There is a section of Detroit’s east side that sums up the city’s decline, a grim landscape of boarded-up stores, abandoned homes and empty lots that stretch all the way to the river. And in the middle of it stands one of the most modern.... More

Contracts, court rulings hamstring workers. When Jose Tadeo Gamez Flores realized that his employer had failed to pay him for all the hours he was working as a janitor, he did what many other employees might do in the same situation: He tried to sue to recover the lost wages. But Flores, 34, ran into an obstacle when he tried to file a.... More

Zimmerman verdict unlikely to be the end of the Trayvon Martin saga. It’s over. But it’s not really done.  The not-guilty verdict that sounded so final, so utterly unequivocal, in Courtroom 5D of the Seminole County courthouse Saturday night has quickly given way to a kaleidoscope of demonstrations.... More

Homeownership, the key to happiness? If trying to buy an apartment in New York City has been making you miserable, consider this: actually getting that home may not make you happy. A growing body of research suggests that spending money on real estate doesn’t necessarily mean.... More

Sex on campus: she can play that game too. At 11 on a weeknight earlier this year, her work finished, a slim, pretty junior at the University of Pennsylvania did what she often does when she has a little free time. She texted her regular hookup — the guy she is sleeping with but not.... More

Chicago's intern boot camp is rehearsal for life and death issues. On the first day of “boot camp,” Dr. Diane B. Wayne asked the Northwestern Memorial Hospital class of new interns for a show of hands if any were nervous. Some sat still, wearing poker faces. “Those of you who did not raise your hand,”.... More

Sequester causes pain on the reservation. PINE RIDGE, S.D. — The Red Cloud-Bissonette family needs a new trailer. Frank, who is disabled, and Norma, his wife, members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, live on the sprawling grasslands of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Despite their.... More

Texas Senate passes bill restricting abortion. The Texas Senate gave final passage on Friday to one of the strictest anti-abortion measures in the country, legislation championed by Gov. Rick Perry, who rallied the Republican-controlled Legislature late last month after a Democratic.... More

San Francisco plane crash: little talk of speed among pilots. The Asiana Airlines jetliner that crashed atSan Francisco International Airport was only nine seconds from impact when one of the pilots first mentioned that it was flying too slowly, prompting a last-ditch attempt to abort the landing, a.... More

George Zimmerman's defense attorneys begin closing arguments. SANFORD, Fla. — George Zimmerman's defense attorney began his final arguments Friday, trying to convince six jurors that the neighborhood watch volunteer acted in self-defense when he fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. More

House GOP bill would shut down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. House Republicans on Thursday released the details of legislation that would shutter mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and nearly eliminate the government’s role in backing the nation’s mortgage market. More

Cost estimate puts student loan deal in doubt. WASHINGTON — A tentative agreement to overhaul the federal student loan program was close to collapsing on Thursday night after the Congressional Budget Office said the proposal would cost the Treasury $22 billion over 10 years, according to.... More

House Republicans push through farm bill, without food stamps. Republicans muscled a pared-back agriculture bill through the House on Thursday, stripping out the food stamp program to satisfy recalcitrant conservatives but losing what little Democratic support the bill had when it failed last month. It was.... More

Study shows mammals can pick sex of offspring. Mammals appear to have the ability to select the gender of their offspring for the benefit of their species, according to a new study that followed three generations of more than 2,300 animals from the San Diego Zoo. It is not a conscious.... More

High-tech eyeglasses, not made by Google. If someone mentions the phrase “high-tech glasses,” you probably assume that person is talking about Google Glass, the smartphone-on-a-headband that Google hopes to offer for sale next year. The truth is, though, that 2013 has been the.... More

E-book ruling gives Amazon an advantage. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, loves disrupting markets. In that regard, he must be having a delightful summer. The book business, once so mired in the past it seemed part of the antiques trade, is up for grabs. A federal judge ruled on.... More

Republicans in House resist overhaul for immigration. WASHINGTON — Meeting for the first time as a group to hash out their approach to immigration, House Republicans on Wednesday came down overwhelmingly against a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, putting in jeopardy.... More

Maryland's path to an accord in abortion fight. BALTIMORE — The 18-year-old woman arrived at Johns Hopkins Hospital by medevac helicopter in critical condition. Her uterus and bowel had been pierced during a late-term abortion that had started in New Jersey and ended at an unmarked,.... More

U.S. vows to rein in questionable debt collection practices. Federal regulators are cracking down on questionable debt collection practices by some of the nation’s biggest lenders. The push comes after revelations that some of the same practices that have haunted the foreclosures of homes — like.... More

Rare mutation ignites race for cholesterol drug. She was a 32-year-old aerobics instructor from a Dallas suburb — healthy, college educated, with two young children. Nothing out of the ordinary, except one thing. Her cholesterol was astoundingly low. Her low-density lipoprotein, or LDL,.... More

At restaurant, delay in health law brings relief. ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — Eric King has worked diligently to keep his family’s 35-year-old seafood restaurant here viable, most recently by expanding the menu beyond its well-loved crab cakes and other traditional dishes to draw a younger,.... More

Too much noise from hospital alarms poses risks for patients. Walk into a hospital intensive-care unit and hear the din: A ventilator honks loudly. An infusion pump emits a high-pitched beep-beep every six seconds. A blood pressure monitor pushes out one long tone after another. The racket comes from.... More

Both parties unite to give ex-felons a second chance. A national movement to rethink crime and punishment is gaining a foothold in Minnesota, pushing the state toward policies that help ex-offenders rebuild their lives in an age of instant background checks and eternal Internet mug shots.  The.... More

Insurance Exchange presents technical challenges on tight deadline. The no-frills space where high-tech wizards are building Minnesota’s health insurance exchange looks like a war room for a political campaign. IT consultants work elbow to elbow around computers in a center island. Along one wall, stripes of.... More

New tool aims to help Facebook users dig deep. Facebook is an excellent tool for certain kinds of social interaction. With a couple of clicks, you can share a cute photo of your newborn baby. You can pop over to the page of a college buddy and find out where he lives now and whether he is a.... More

Covering not a corner office, but time at home. FALL RIVER, Wis. — Sara Uttech has not spent much of her career so far worrying about “leaning in.” Instead, she has mostly been hanging on, trying to find ways to get her career to accommodate her family life, rather than the other way.... More

Lines thinning out, but marriage equality still sweet. Clutching matching bouquets and wearing brightly colored wedding gowns, Anna and Melody Hennigh kissed at the top of the grand staircase in the City Hall rotunda. Moments later, they were married, and they hugged their parents. There wasn’t a.... More

Mayo Clinic researchers study how body can repair itself. At Mayo Clinic’s Center for Regenerative Medicine, physicians and researchers have a dazzling array of tools at their fingertips: transplants, genomics, computerized data analysis and biomedical engineering. But the core idea is simple:.... More

Homes keep rising in the West despite wildfire threat. The death of 19 firefighters in Arizona this week highlights what has become a fact of life in the West: Every summer, smoke fills the big skies yet people continue to build in the places that burn most. More people live in these areas, and.... More

Paid sick leave laws generate concern, but not much pain. Back in 2007, as a new paid sick leave law — the first in the nation — was about to take effect in San Francisco, Bill Stone was worried. Mr. Stone owns the Atlas Cafe in the city’s Mission District, and the new law directed him to provide his 21 employees with one hour of paid time off for.... More

A trip to camp to break a tech addiction. There was a phantom buzzing in my shorts. I had carried my iPhone in my left front pocket for so many years that my jeans have permanent rectangular fade marks over my thigh. By now the phone is almost an extension of my nervous system; even.... More

Nebraska's new brain research center will study concussions. LINCOLN, Neb. — If all goes according to Dennis Molfese's plan, the day is coming when a football player who takes a hit to the head will come to the sideline, take off his helmet and slip on an electrode-covered mesh cap. The team's medical.... More

States struggle to launch Obamacare on time. HARTFORD, Conn. — Facing tight deadlines and daunting workloads, states across the country are scaling back ambitions for implementing the Affordable Care Act. At a monthly board meeting of Connecticut’s health insurance exchange, members.... More

U.S. adds 195,000 jobs; unemployment remains at 7.6%. The economy added 195,000 jobs in June, the Labor Department reported Friday morning, slightly more than analysts had been expecting and suggesting steady growth. Wall Street has been feverishly awaiting the June employment report. Not only.... More

Three short workouts or one long one? According to the latest science, not only do multiple short sessions of exercise generally provide the same health and fitness benefits as a comparable amount of exercise completed in one uninterrupted workout, but by some measures, the briefer.... More

Disease without a cure spreads quietly in the West. BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — In 36 years with the Los Angeles police, Sgt. Irwin Klorman faced many dangerous situations, including one routine call that ended with Uzi fire and a bullet-riddled body sprawled on the living room floor. But his most.... More

Oregon tries new way to pay for college. Going to college can seem like a choice between impossibly high payments while in school or a crushing debt load for years afterward, but one state is experimenting with a third way. This week, the Oregon Legislature approved a plan that could.... More

Chrysler recalls 840,000 vehicles, mostly in U.S. DETROIT (Reuters) - Chrysler Group LLC said on Wednesday it will recall 840,000 vehicles in the United States and other countries, mostly for active-restraint head rests that are possibly flawed. More

Postal Service snoops for federal government. WASHINGTON – Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his.... More

Ohio sinkhole swallows car, driver escapes. A northwest Ohio sinkhole has swallowed a car traveling down a street and briefly trapped the driver, who climbed out after authorities gave her a ladder. Toledo police Sgt. Joe Heffernan says a water main break beneath the road may have caused the sinkhole Wednesday. The hole is estimated to be at.... More

Keeping cancer a secret. My patient came to see me every six months or so with his wife of 40 years, making the five-hour drive from West Virginia, where he managed a few businesses. He had myelodysplastic syndrome, a type of bone marrow cancer that in his case was.... More

Postponing health rules emboldens Republicans. The Obama administration’s decision to delay enforcing a pillar of the health care law, the mandate that larger employers provide insurance benefits, raised new questions on Wednesday about the government’s preparedness to carry out the.... More

Scientists fabricate rudimentary human livers. Researchers in Japan have used human stem cells to create tiny human livers like those that arise early in fetal life. When the scientists transplanted the rudimentary livers into mice, the little organs grew, made human liver proteins, and.... More

Army ousts Egypt's president. Egypt’s military on Wednesday deposed Mohamed Morsi, the nation’s first freely elected president, suspending the constitution, installing an interim government and insisting it was responding to the millions of Egyptians who had opposed Mr..... More

Factory orders rise; hint at stability in manufacturing. New orders for factory goods rose for a second straight month in May, adding to tentative signs of stabilization in manufacturing after a recent slowdown. More

GOP groups offering cover for lawmakers on immigration. Fox News viewers in Florida will see a new commercial in the coming weeks urging them to call Senator Marco Rubio. “Thank him for keeping his promise, and fighting to secure the border,” a narrator says in the ad, which is paid for by the.... More

19 firefighters killed battling Arizona blaze. YARNELL, Ariz. — Gusty, hot winds blew an Arizona blaze out of control Sunday in a forest northwest of Phoenix, overtaking and killing 19 members of an elite fire crew in the deadliest wildfire involving firefighters in the U.S. for at least.... More

Getting your feet wet at water parks. The first moments inside a water park complex almost always jar your senses. A rush of moist, chlorine-scented air fills your nose. Bright, cartoon colors, not to mention characters, surround you. And then there is the continuous loop of pop.... More

First gay man is approved for green card. An American man in Florida and his husband, who is from Bulgaria, have become the first same-sex married couple to be approved for a permanent resident visa, an immigration milestone that comes after the Supreme Court struck down a federal.... More

At retooled summer schools, creativity, not just catch-up. Just a few years ago, school districts around the country were slashing summer classes as the economic downturn eviscerated their budgets. Now, despite continuing budgetary challenges, districts are re-envisioning summer school as something.... More

American way of birth, costliest in the world. Seven months pregnant, at a time when most expectant couples are stockpiling diapers and choosing car seats, Renée Martin was struggling with bigger purchases. At a prenatal class she was told about epidural anesthesia and was given the.... More

Treat people with H.I.V. early to stop spread. LONDON — Young children and certain other people with the AIDS virus should be started on medicines as soon as they are diagnosed, the World Health Organization says in new guidelines that also recommend earlier treatment for adults. More

For gay marriage, the real battle begins. Hours after the Supreme Court struck down a key section of the Defense of Marriage Act, Udi Ofer of the American Civil Liberties Union spent his evening in a Unitarian church in Summit, N.J., training nearly 40 members how to convince three.... More

Golden parachutes are still very much in style. MOST employees who leave a company are typically offered modest severance — in some cases a corporate pension, and perhaps a retirement party hosted by co-workers. For many chief executives of corporations, the rewards are far, far richer. More

Have a great vacation (if it's approved). JUST about every time I plan a vacation, I worry that I won’t be able to go. You can’t leave, my boss might say, because we’re just too busy to spare you. (In that case, I think indignantly, they’d better reimburse me for the plane.... More

An unstoppable climb in CEO pay. WHEN we made our annual foray into the executive pay gold mine in April, chief executives’ earnings for 2012 showed what appeared to be muted growth on the year. The $14 million in median overall compensation received by the top 100 C.E.O.... More

Administration says it will press to provide marriage benefits in all.... President Obama signaled Thursday that his administration would extend federal benefits to gay couples living in states that don’t recognize their marriages, a relief for advocates left with a thicket of uncertainty a day after their.... More

Student loan rate likely to double on Monday, but lawmakers hope to.... Lawmakers acknowledge that the rate on a low-interest federal loan for millions of college students in financial need is likely to double on Monday because of a congressional stalemate over how to stop that from happening. But Democratic.... More

U.S. standards for school snacks move beyond cafeteria to fight obesity. The Agriculture Department on Thursday effectively banned the sale of snack foods like candy, cookies and sugary drinks, including sports drinks, in schools, making it harder for students to avoid the now-healthier school meals by eating snacks.... More

Charitable giving, from head or heart. Our dog Lucy died this week, and it got me thinking about the role she played in making my wife and me more charitable. Lucy was a retired guide dog who, during her working life, gave birth to 32 puppies, many of whom also became guide dogs..... More

A bill allowing more foreign workers stirs a tech debate. SAN FRANCISCO — As the Senate voted on a landmark immigration bill that would let Silicon Valley companies import more foreign engineers, some Americans remain locked in a deeply emotional argument over whether outsiders are taking jobs.... More

Mandatory federal cuts hurt private sector too. Congress’s $85 billion, across-the-board budget cuts may not have brought the economy to a halt, as many once feared. But they are having a negative effect on jobs in the private sector, according to an analysis of the industries whose head.... More

Bipartisan plan emerges in Senate to prevent doubling of student interest.... A bipartisan group of senators has announced a proposal to prevent a doubling of the interest rate on certain federal student loans, an increase that would affect 7 million college students in the coming school year. On Monday, the rate on.... More

Immigration bill provision could affect all new hires. The sweeping immigration measure advancing rapidly in the Senate goes far beyond much-debated border security measures and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants with a crucial requirement that could affect every American who takes a.... More

Wearable devices nudge you to health. You’ve heard of the Quantified Self movement? It’s the rise of watches, clips and bracelets that monitor your physical activity, sleep and other biological functions. The idea is that continual numerical awareness of your lifestyle works to.... More

Both sides on same-sex marriage focus on next battlegrounds. With the expected addition of California’s citizens after Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, some 30 percent of Americans will live in states offering same-sex marriage. Now the two sides of the marriage wars are gearing up to resume the.... More

Most Americans are "mindless zombies" at work, says poll. Seventy percent of full-time Americans working stiffs have either mentally “checked out” at work or purposefully sabotage the company’s productivity. The latest count in an ongoing Gallup Poll classifies the 100 million people working.... More

At 80, Diane Feinstein is blazing a new trail in Congress. She stands before television cameras just hours after the news breaks that the U.S. government has been conducting a massive surveillance program, compiling a database of Americans’ phone records and monitoring foreign terrorism suspects’.... More

Obama takes on power plants as part of new climate plan. President Barack Obama tried to revive his stalled climate change agenda on Tuesday, promising new rules to cut carbon emissions from U.S. power plants and other domestic actions including support for renewable energy. More

Texas vote passing abortion bill is rendered moot. AUSTIN, Tex. — Hours after claiming that they successfully passed some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country, Republican lawmakers in Texas reversed course on Wednesday and said a disputed late-night vote on the bill did not.... More

Court strikes down Defense of Marriage Act. The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a 1996 law denying federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples is unconstitutional, in a sign of how rapidly the national debate over gay rights has shifted. The decision was 5 to 4, with Justice.... More

Supreme Court raises bar to prove job discrimination. In two decisions issued on Monday, the Supreme Court effectively made it harder for workers to prove that they had suffered employment discrimination. One ruling narrows the definition of what constitutes a supervisor in racial and sexual.... More

University of Minnesota study: weighty words affect overweight kids. Whether children try extreme diets or binge eating might hinge on how their parents talk to them about their weight. University of Minnesota researchers reported Monday that adolescents were less likely to try extreme weight-loss techniques if.... More

Getting men to want to use condoms. It takes just a peek at the online store Condomania to appreciate the variety of condoms out there. Flavors like island punch, banana split and bubble gum. Vibrating condom rings with batteries that last up to 20 minutes. Glow-in-the-dark.... More

Lacking definitive ruling on affirmative action, both sides claim victory. The Supreme Court’s decision to send a thorny affirmative action case back to the lower courts for additional review left both sides claiming victory on Monday. Civil rights groups that favor race-conscious admissions cheered the ruling,.... More

Home prices see biggest annual gain in seven years. U.S. single-family home prices jumped in April, racking up their biggest annual gain in seven years in a sign of the growing momentum in the housing recovery, a closely watched survey showed on Tuesday. More

Supreme Court to hear abortion buffer zone appeal. The Supreme Court will reconsider the constitutionality of a 2007 Massachusetts law that bars protests in 35-foot “buffer zones” around abortion clinic entrances, exits and driveways. The justices on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from.... More

Employers test plans that cap health costs. Hoping to cut medical costs, employers are experimenting with a new way to pay for health care, telling workers that their company health plan will pay only a fixed amount for a given test or procedure, like a CT scan or knee replacement..... More

NY State rewards home care providers it once rebuked. Hunting for ways that the incoming governor could close a $2 billion budget deficit late in 2010, New York State officials scrutinized Medicaid spending on home health care, and made some startling discoveries. More

This time, greater will to revamp immigration. WASHINGTON — Six years ago this month, re-election campaign looming, Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana joined 15 other Democrats to shoot down an overhaul of the immigration system, which she said encouraged “illegal behavior” with.... More

Supreme Court orders lower court to reconsider affirmative action case The Supreme Court ruled Monday that lower courts did not apply a sufficiently tough level of scrutiny to the University of Texas’ use of race in admissions decisions, sending the case back to one of those lower courts to be reconsidered. More

3D map of human brain gives unprecedented detail. Researchers in Germany and Canada have produced a new map of the human brain — not the sort that shows every brain cell and its every connection or the kind that shows broad patterns of activity in brain regions, but a work of classic anatomy.... More

Facebook says technical flaw exposed 6 million users. Facebook has inadvertently exposed six million users’ phone numbers and e-mail addresses to unauthorized viewers over the last year, the company said late Friday, blaming the data leaks, which began in 2012, on a technical flaw More

California pushes for immigrant health care. LOS ANGELES — When Congress passed President Obama’s health care overhaul, a critical compromise provision was that immigrants living in the United States illegally would not be allowed access to publicly subsidized health insurance. More

Marijuana crops in California threaten forests and wildlife. ARCATA, Calif. — It took the death of a small, rare member of the weasel family to focus the attention of Northern California’s marijuana growers on the impact that their huge and expanding activities were having on the environment. More

F.A.A. to consider relaxing rules for devices on planes. A working group assigned by the Federal Aviation Administration to research the use of electronics on airplanes is expected to recommend relaxing the ban on portable devices during takeoff and landing. But the group has postponed its final.... More

20,000 foster kids adopted so far through website. WASHINGTON — Federal officials say 20,000 foster children have been adopted after being listed on a national website that links adoptive families with kids. The number is especially significant because the majority of those adopted were not.... More

Study links teen bullying to suicide factors in both bullies and victims. Bullies and their victims are both more likely to think about or attempt suicide, but whether they hurt themselves can depend on the support they think they have. The discovery comes from a new analysis by researchers at the University of.... More

HPV vaccine is credited in fall of teenagers' infection rate. The prevalence of dangerous strains of the human papillomavirus — the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States and a principal cause of cervical cancer — has dropped by half among teenage girls in recent years, a.... More

A homely rodent may hold cancer-fighting clues. The laboratory of Vera Gorbunova and Andrei Seluanov, a husband-and-wife team of biologists at the University of Rochester, has the feel of a petting zoo. They maintain colonies of several species of rodents — some familiar, like mice and.... More

Critical step for suit seeking payment for college athletes. In 2008, as big money poured into the coffers of college athletics, theN.C.A.A. faced a growing chorus of criticism that student-athletes were being exploited. But N.C.A.A. executives, in private communications, opposed any notion that.... More

Strategist out of the closet and into the fray, this time for gay marriage. As the Supreme Court considers overturning California’s ban on same-sex marriage, the case has already transformed one gay man: Ken Mehlman, the once-closeted Republican operative who orchestrated President George W. Bush’s 2004.... More

GOP-led house passes sweeping abortion restrictions. Republicans in the U.S. House passed sweeping new restrictions on late-term abortions Tuesday, a mostly symbolic initiative that served to re-ignite social and cultural tensions that divided the nation in the last presidential election. More

Board to vote on condoms in Boston schools. The Boston School Committee is set to vote Wednesday night on a new health policy that would make condoms available in the district’s high schools, bringing this city in line with New York and Los Angeles. More

AMA recognizes obesity as a disease. The American Medical Association has officially recognized obesity as a disease, a move that could induce physicians to pay more attention to the condition and spur more insurers to pay for treatments. In making the decision, delegates at.... More

Immigration law changes seen cutting billions from deficit. Congressional budget analysts, providing a positive economic assessment of proposed immigration law changes, said Tuesday that legislation to overhaul the nation’s immigration system would cut close to $1 trillion from the federal deficit.... More

Humanities committee sounds an alarm. A new national corps of “master teachers” trained in the humanities and social sciences and increased support for research in “endangered” liberal arts subjects are among the recommendations of a major report to be delivered on.... More

Boom of white collar prosecutions spilling from federal to district courts.... White-collar crimes are appearing more regularly in district courts, straining a court system historically unfamiliar with cases that have typically landed in federal court. More

GOP pushes new abortion limits to appease vocal base. After Republicans lost the presidential election and seats in both the House and the Senate last year, many in the party offered a stern admonishment: If we want to broaden our appeal, steer clear of divisive social and cultural issues. More

New York University gives its stars loans for summer homes. Follow one of Fire Island’s quaint footpaths away from the ferry dock, past modest cottages and better-appointed vacation homes, to an elegant modern beach house that extends across three lots. A composition in bold, unadorned planes, it has.... More

In embattled Detroit, no talk of shared pain. When New York City threatened to declare bankruptcy in 1975, the idea so terrified everyone that it forced the city, its workers and its recalcitrant bankers to sit down and find ways to share the pain. Now another large city, Detroit, appears.... More

Colleges from low-performing schools face tough college road. Johnathon Carrington grew up on the sixth floor of a low-income D.C. apartment complex, a building most recently in the news for a drive-by shooting that injured 13. His parents told him early on that education could be his escape, and.... More

Caffeine withdrawal is now a mental health disorder. Coffee is probably the most socially accepted drug in the Western world. Yes, it does intoxicate. The bitter brew that kick-starts so many early mornings and fuels so many drawn-out workdays causes withdrawal and cravings. More

Cheating ourselves of sleep. Think you do just fine on five or six hours of shut-eye? Chances are, you are among the many millions who unwittingly shortchange themselves on sleep. Research shows that most people require seven or eight hours of sleep to function optimally. More

Study finds supportive tilt to gay marriage coverage. News organizations are far more likely to present a supportive view of same-sex marriage than an antagonistic view, according to a content study by the Pew Research Center to be released on Monday. More

Choice of health plans to vary sharply from state to state. When a typical 40-year-old uninsured woman in Maine goes to the new state exchange to buy health insurance this fall, she may have just two companies to choose from: the one that already sells most individual policies in the state, and a.... More

Hockey star's death shows how easily patients can get pain pills. Three years before he died of a drug overdose, Derek Boogaard was punched in the mouth during a fight at a Wild game. And broke a tooth. Within days, Boogaard, the Wild’s 6-foot-7 enforcer, was bouncing from one team ­doctor to another.... More

Hockey star's death shows how easily patients can get pain pills. Three years before he died of a drug overdose, Derek Boogaard was punched in the mouth during a fight at a Wild game. And broke a tooth. Within days, Boogaard, the Wild’s 6-foot-7 enforcer, was bouncing from one team ­doctor to another seeking a steady stream of powerful painkillers. More

Radical fix for mortgage crisis. Community organizer Melvin Willis stood in front of 100 Richmond residents on Saturday and said: “Raise your hand if you’re underwater.” Almost every single person held their arm in the air. Richmond remains among the Bay Area cities most.... More

A different kind of fatherhood. I came out long before gay men yearned for weddings, much less baby showers. In 1979, when I was 22, New York offered young men like me many freedoms, including the freedom to not have to propagate. Like many other gay men — and like many.... More

Even pessimists feel optimistic about American economy. For more than a decade, the economy has failed to grow the way it once did. Unemployment has not stayed this high, this long, since the 1930s. But could the New Normal, as this long economic slog has been called, be growing old? More

Google to use balloons to provide free Internet access to remote or poor.... Google has a truly sky-high idea for connecting billions of people to the Internet — 12 miles in the air to be exact — through giant helium balloons circling the globe that are equipped to beam WiFi signals below. Google will announce.... More

Man finds father on Facebook. Celebrating Father's Day is still relatively new for Chris Truesdale and his son, Terrell Starr. Starr always knew that his father was out there somewhere, but Truesdale had no idea he had a son until he received a Facebook message back in.... More

Seeking exposé, students end up in handcuffs. When two student journalists fromPaw Prints, the newspaper of West Islip High School, set out to investigate school security, they thought they might do some good, maybe win the award for story of the year in the Long Island Press high school.... More

The unspoken stigma of workplace flexibility. Assume for a moment that your employer let you decide when and where you worked — you might arrive early so you could leave in time to care for a child, or work part of the week from home. Or perhaps you want to reduce your hours for a while.... More

To lure students, off-campus housing perks grow. COLUMBIA, Mo. — Brenden Heiland had breathed the vanilla lavender-scented clubhouse air. He had seen the beach volleyball court, toured the game room equipped with billiards, Ping-Pong and air hockey tables, and learned with delight of the.... More

Food, gasoline push up producer prices. Producer prices rose more than expected in May as gasoline and food prices rebounded, but underlying inflation pressures remained muted, which could argue against an early scaling back of monetary stimulus by the Federal Reserve. More

Many women in CIA still hit the glass ceiling. The announcement this week that a White House lawyer will become the first female deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency may seem to signal that women have finally arrived at the spy agency known since its inception in the 1940s for.... More

Smartphone makers pressed to address growing theft problem. Seeking to curb a nationwide increase in smartphone thefts, New York’s attorney general and San Francisco’s district attorney on Thursday announced an initiative to push the industry to develop technologies that will discourage theft and.... More

Obama's pen may shape scope of marriage ruling. A Supreme Court ruling this month that could overturn the ban on federal benefits for same-sex couples is presenting the Obama administration with a series of complicated and politically sensitive decisions: how aggressively to overhaul.... More

Private preschools to see more public funds. CHICAGO — The preschoolers who arrived at school early for free breakfast on a recent morning quietly ate granola bars and yogurt as middle school students recited part of the rosary over the public address system. More

Mother says Pennsylvania girl's lung transplant a success. A 10-year-old Pennsylvania girl with cystic fibrosis who only became eligible for an adult organ transplant because of a federal judge's order is out of surgery after a double-lung transplant on Wednesday and doing well, her mother said. More

Want more time off? Some employers let you buy it. Want more time off work to hang out at the beach? Need a little cash and have vacation days to spare? Some companies allow their workers to buy and sell vacation time, a perk that gives workers more flexibility in managing their time off. More

Family ties put media in a bind. It’s all but a journalistic commandment: Thou shalt not have a vested interest in the story you’re covering. Otherwise, a personal entanglement could color a reporter’s neutrality or cloud public perceptions of fairness. An obvious area.... More

More deaths than births for white Americans. Deaths exceeded births among non-Hispanic white Americans for the first time in at least a century, according to new census data, a benchmark that heralds profound demographic change. More

Data reveal a rise in college degrees among Americans. The number of Americans graduating from college has surged in recent years, sending the share with a college degree to a new high, federal data shows. More

EEOC accuses two companies of discrimination in hiring. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Tuesday accused two major companies of indirectly discriminating against African Americans by using criminal background checks to screen out workers. More

Poll: 3 out of 4 Americans oppose race-based college admissions. Americans overwhelmingly oppose race-based college admissions and support extending federal benefits to same-sex couples, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that finds broad public agreement on issues awaiting Supreme Court.... More

How accurate are fitness monitors? Nate Meckes recognized that he needed to study the accuracy of activity monitors after wearing one. More

Voice-activated technology is called safety-risk for drivers. As concerns have intensified about driver distraction from electronic gadgets, automakers have increasingly introduced voice-activated systems that allow drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. But a new study says that.... More

What happens to women who are denied abortions? S. arrived alone at a Planned Parenthood in Richmond, Calif., four days before Christmas. As she filled out her paperwork, she looked at the women around her. Nearly all had someone with them; S. wondered if they also felt terrible about.... More

Going to college is worth it, even if you drop out. The economic case for college is simple: college graduates make more money. In fact, they make over $500,000 more over the course of their lifetimes, on average. That works out, as we’ve noted before, to among the best returns-on-investment.... More

Juice cleansing is a hit, but is it truly healthy? The thought of consuming nothing but the juice of green leafy vegetables for five days terrified Jamie Hickok, but she couldn’t ignore the promise of more energy, weight loss and a glowing complexion. More

Cancer patients abandoning their beds and hitting the gym. A growing body of evidence supports the idea that sweating is better than resting after cancer. The workouts both restore energy drained from cancer treatments and, in some cases, help prevent the disease’s return. More

The sippy cup 1% Much of the baby market is devoted to figuring out which preferences people will pay more for. And it seems as if the market now offers endless choices. At my last count, Amazon alone sold 2,417 different pacifiers, more than 1,000 car seats.... More

U.S. drops bid to limit sales of morning-after pill. The Obama administration has decided to stop trying to block over-the-counter availability of the best-known morning-after contraceptive pill for all women and girls, a move fraught with political repercussions for President Obama. More

Music service, mobile software, expected from Apple. Apple is expected to reveal a digital radio service and changes to the software behind iPhones and iPads on Monday as the company opens its annual conference for software developers. More

Mayo Clinic puts stem cells to the test on infant heart defect. ROCHESTER – Every year, about 1,000 babies are born in the United States with half a heart — a rare defect that requires a series of risky surgeries and, even then, leaves the infants with a strong likelihood that their hearts will wear.... More

Carbon dioxide emissions put planet on course for "disaster for all.... Global emissions of carbon dioxide from energy use rose 1.4 percent to 31.6 gigatons in 2012, setting a record and putting the planet on course for temperature increases well above international climate goals, the International Energy Agency.... More

Senate digs in for long battle on immigrants. After seven months of steadily building momentum, the push for a comprehensive overhaul of the immigration system enters its most crucial phase this week in the Senate, where Republicans remain divided over how much to cooperate.... More

Grouping students by ability regains favor in schools. It was once common for elementary-school teachers to arrange their classrooms by ability, placing the highest-achieving students in one cluster, the lowest in another. But ability grouping fell out of favor in the late 1980s and the 1990s. More

Google has more goodwill than Facebook or Apple, poll finds. Google beats out rivals Apple and Facebook when it comes to the all-important game of reputation, continuing its place on top of a Washington Post-ABC News poll measuring how respondents feel about some of the country’s top tech firms. More

Accidental landlords boost demand for property managers. Chris Wilcoxon and his wife weren’t in a good position to sell their house near Iowa City, Iowa, when they moved to Woodbury in 2011. Like many Americans whose home values have languished, they would have had to come up with thousands of.... More

Minnesota begins all-year efforts to fight flu. Twin Cities area hospitals and state health officials are responding to the deadliest flu outbreak in years by adopting new strategies to combat the virus and better protect the public. For the first time, some hospitals have started to monitor patients year-round for potential flu symptoms, rather.... More

Remember all those passwords? No need. “If you want to avoid having your identity stolen, use long passwords that contain digits, punctuation and no recognizable words. Make up a different password for every Web site. And change all of your passwords every 30 days.” More

Cleaning more than cobwebs. It turns out that Bhakti Sondra Shaye does windows. She also scours microwaves, refrigerators, dishwashers and closets. Ms. Shaye, 49, who has an M.F.A. in creative writing and practiced for years as a corporate lawyer, is no mere clutter.... More

Weight-loss surgery aids diabetics, U of MN study shows. Weight-loss surgery can dramatically improve the ability to control diabetes in mildly to moderately obese patients, according to a major study by University of Minnesota researchers. But the study also served as a reminder that the surgery.... More

How new 'phased retirement' for federal employees will work. With their pay frozen and reduced by furloughs and their credibility at times questioned, you’d think federal employees would dash for the door as soon as they were eligible to retire. Instead, many have pushed for a way to hang around the.... More

Sebelius asked companies to support health care law. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, disclosed on Tuesday that she had made telephone calls to three companies regulated by her department and urged them to help a nonprofit group promote President Obama’s health.... More

Bill to alter Bush-era education law gives states more room. Renewing the effort to revise No Child Left Behind, the signature Bush-era federal education law, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, introduced a new version on Tuesday that he said would “replace the failed tenets” of the law. More

Is barefoot style running best? New studies cast doubt. Barefoot-running enthusiasts long have believed that running without shoes or in minimalist footwear makes running easier, speedier and less injurious. But a surprisingly large number of new studies suggest that for many people, those.... More

Low-wage workers seek Obama's help. Federal contractors range from the wealthy to the barely paid. This week the Obama administration plans to ask Congress to amend the law so the government will not have to reimburse companies almost $1 million for the salaries of individual.... More

Baby boomers are killing themselves at an alarming rate, raising question:.... Last spring, Frank Turkaly tried to kill himself. A retiree in a Pittsburgh suburb living on disability checks, he was estranged from friends and family, mired in credit card debt and taking medication for depression, cholesterol, diabetes and.... More

Promising new cancer drugs empower the body's own defense system. CHICAGO — The early success of a new class of cancer drugs, revealed in test results released here over the last several days, has raised hope among the world’s top cancer specialists that they may be on the verge of an important.... More

Behind the rise in house prices, Wall Street buyers. The last time the housing market was this hot in Phoenix and Las Vegas, the buyers pushing up prices were mostly small time. Nowadays, they are big time — Wall Street big. Large investment firms have spent billions of dollars over the last.... More

Alternatives to scouts see rise in numbers. For more than a century, the Boy Scouts of America has had something of a monopoly on neckerchiefs, knot-tying, merit badges and all manner of backcountry skills for boys, treating snakebite and frostbite alike. More

Helping children play safely in sports. Millions of children participate in organized sports, activities that are important to their social and physical development. While sports also may place children at risk of injuries, most are preventable if participants, their parents and.... More

Simple vinegar test cuts cervical cancer rates in India. MUMBAI, INDIA – A simple vinegar test slashed cervical cancer death rates by one-third in a remarkable study of 150,000 women in the slums of India, where the disease is the top cancer killer of women. More

Chasing the storm, but hoping not to catch it. When Tim Samar