Regeneron, Sanofi asthma drug, seen as potential game changer. A new type of asthma drug meant to attack the underlying causes of the respiratory disease slashed episodes by 87 percent in a mid-stage trial, making it a potential game changer for patients with moderate to severe disease, researchers said on.... More

Medical mysteries: a clue to a girl's painful ailment goes overlooked. ‘Oh my God,” Leigh Partridge remembers thinking, her mind reeling as she tried to contemplate the unimaginable. “This cannot be happening again.” Doctors in the emergency room of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) had just.... More

No easy choices on breast reconstruction. By almost any measure, Roseann Valletti’s reconstructive breast surgery was a success. Although it was a protracted process, involving some pain and a nightmarish nipple replacement, she is pleased with how she looks. But she is uncomfortable.... More

A flashy bet for Yahoo on a shift in social media. Yahoo’s $1.1 billion proposed acquisition of Tumblr is a huge coup for the young founder of the even younger start-up and a splashy move by Marissa Mayer to shake up her company. More

Oklahoma tornado kills 91, including 20 children. MOORE, Okla. — Emergency crews and volunteers continued to work through the early morning hours Tuesday in a frantic search for survivors of a huge tornado that ripped through parts of Oklahoma City and its suburbs, killing at least 91 people.... More

Google's wearable glass gadget: cool or creepy? Google staged four discussions expounding on the finer points of its "Glass" wearable computer during this week's developer conference. Missing from the agenda, however, was a session on etiquette when using the recording-capable gadget, which.... More

CDC says 20% of U.S. children have mental health disorders. Up to one in five American youngsters — about 7 million to 12 million, by one estimate — experience a mental health disorder each year, according to a new report billed as the first comprehensive look at the mental health status of.... More

Behind the mortgage settlements from the housing crisis. Banks have paid less than half the $5.7 billion in cash owed to troubled homeowners under nearly 30 settlements brokered by the government since 2008, delaying help to the millions of victims of discrimination and shoddy lending that.... More

Public outrage over factory conditions spurs labor deal. STOCKHOLM — For a global retailer, it was the worst kind of publicity. Two weeks after the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh collapsed in one of the worst industrial disasters in history, a brash human-rights ad went viral. I More

Tech industry pushes to amend immigration bill The technology industry got much of what it wanted in a bill that overhauls federal immigration law. But in the give-and-take of political bargaining, the legislation emerged with some provisions the industry considers unappealing. Now its.... More

Public outrage over factory conditions spurs labor deal. STOCKHOLM — For a global retailer, it was the worst kind of publicity. Two weeks after the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh collapsed in one of the worst industrial disasters in history, a brash human-rights ad went viral. More

Shareholders press companies to disclose more about political spending. As regulators wrestle with whether to force companies to disclose more about their political spending, an increasing number of shareholders are taking matters into their own hands, thrusting the issue before boards of directors at companies.... More

Hospitals fight delirium with volunteer help. Paula Duncan saw how quickly it could happen with her father-in-law. When he was hospitalized with pneumonia at age 80, his personality changed. Almost overnight, he became aggressive and combative. As a hospital nurse, Duncan knew that older.... More

Abortion law in Arkansas is blocked by U.S. judge. A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked enforcement of one of the country’s most stringent abortion laws, an Arkansas ban on the procedure at the 12th week of pregnancy, saying the law was likely to be declared unconstitutional. More

Immigrant workers give new direction to Los Angeles unions. LOS ANGELES — As the head of the hotel workers’ union here in the 1990s, Maria Elena Durazo negotiated a contract with provisions rarely seen by labor unions: The jobs of workers who were deported or lost authorization to work in the United.... More

Gay marriage signed into law in France. PARIS — French President Francois Hollande has signed into law a bill allowing same-sex marriage, making France the 14th country to legalize gay weddings. France's official journal announced on Saturday the bill had become law after the.... More

Feds call for better childcare safety rules. WASHINGTON – Federal health officials issued broad new standards Thursday to improve safety in the nation’s child-care facilities, triggered in part by news accounts of day-care deaths in Minnesota, Missouri and other states. More

Camp means community service for many young people. NEW YORK — At 14, Tyler Cohen had never been out of the country or traveled without his Long Island family when he found himself in Costa Rica on a monthlong service trip for teens. There, he worked on a coffee plantation, made signs for a.... More

May consumer sentiment rises to highest in nearly six years. Consumer sentiment rebounded in early May to the highest level in nearly six years as Americans felt better about their financial and economic prospects, particularly among upper-income households, a survey released on Friday showed. More

Steve Job's widow debuts on philanthropic stage. Marlene Castro knew the tall blonde woman only as Laurene, her mentor. They met every few weeks in a rough Silicon Valley neighborhood the year that Ms. Castro was applying to college, and they e-mailed often, bonding over conversations about.... More

New Jersey hospital is nation's costliest. BAYONNE, N.J. — The most expensive hospital in America is not set amid the swaying palm trees of Beverly Hills or the luxury townhouses of New York’s Upper East Side. It is in a faded blue-collar town 11 miles from Midtown Manhattan. More

Cloning is used to create embryonic stem cells. Scientists have finally succeeded in using cloning to create human embryonic stem cells, a step toward developing replacement tissue to treat diseases but one that might also hasten the day when it will be possible to create cloned babies. More

Flu in pregnancy is linked to bipolar disorder. Flu infection during pregnancy may increase the risk for bipolar disorder in the child, according to a new report. Previous studies have found an association between flu infection and schizophrenia, but this one, published online in JAMA.... More

A team approach to college readiness. When Parker Sheffy, a first-year teacher in the Bronx Leadership Academy II, a high school in the South Bronx, talks shop with friends who are also new teachers, he often hears about the problems they are facing: students not showing up to.... More

Seeking calm on the cancer ward. When people choose to have their leukemia treated aggressively, it’s a big commitment, more so than for almost any other cancer. With this therapy we offer them the chance to be cured of a disease moving like wildfire with a stiff breeze.... More

Baffling rise in suicides plagues the U.S. military. After Specialist Freddy Hook, a medic with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, killed himself in 2010, the trail of possible causes seemed long. He had used illegal drugs: Was it the demons of addiction? His rocky relationship with his.... More

Chicago group protests childcare cuts. At a demonstration against child care cuts in Pilsen (a Chicago suburb) Tuesday, there were more kids than adults. The kids yelled “we need childcare” and tried to stay still while adults representing Chicago community groups spoke out in.... More

Doodling helps people concentrate when learning. The doodle. We’ve all done it, whether during a classroom lecture or a meeting at work. At first glance, it’s a trivial waste of time. But upon closer examination, those squiggles, drawings of animals or tiny sketches of the boss in a.... More

In Minnesota Senate, record 17-hour debate yields victory for care workers.... An all-night, 17-hour debate prompted by furious GOP opposition ended with a victory for unions seeking to organize care-workers on Wednesday. The Senate, which began debating the unionization bill at 3 p.m. Tuesday, approved the bill on a.... More

Google's Larry Page enlists Harvard to fight his vocal cord issues. Google CEO Larry Page has long suffered from weakened vocal cords, due to problems with the nerves that control them. Doctors still have not found a cause — a common occurrence with such a condition — for either of his two weakened vocal.... More

Carbon dioxide levels hit record high. Carbon dioxide, the gas inmplicated in the rise in global temperatures, has reached a milestone. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per.... More

Minnesota becomes 12th state to legalize gay marriage. Amid roaring chants from supporters and tears from opponents, the state Senate took a historic, final step Monday to legalize same-sex marriage in Minnesota. The 37-30 vote came after a failed, last-ditch attempt by opponents to scuttle the.... More

To help solve challenging cardiac problems, doctors at Children's press.... It may sound like something out of science fiction, but doctors at Children’s National Medical Center are making hearts. Not actual hearts, but three- dimensional synthetic models churned out by what looks like an ordinary printer. More

Angelina Jolie and breast cancer MY MOTHER fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving.... More

Young Americans lead trend to less driving. CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Dan Mauney keeps misplacing his car. Mr. Mauney, 42, lives in an apartment tower in this city’s Uptown neighborhood, a pedestrian-friendly quarter with new office buildings, sparkling museums and ambitious restaurants. He.... More

Green card lottery, a ticket to hope for many, could be eliminated. In the contentious debate over immigration policy, three groups have dominated public and political attention: the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants seeking to become legal, the skilled foreign workers bound for high-tech jobs and.... More

The new retirement gap is blue- and white-collar. Ken Bueckers loved being a pipe fitter. It took him to the tops of tall buildings and to furnaces below. He yanked valves open and wrestled pipe into crawl spaces. In a perfect world he would still be doing that. He’s 69, but he has a clear.... More

As U.S. workers change, buildings must adapt. Americans seem to work more than ever these days, but they’re not necessarily tethered to the office. Which begs the question: What will future office buildings look like? And how will they address the changing demographics of the workplace.... More

Economix: the care and feeding of small business. As a growing number of small business organizations pursue a policy agenda distinct from that of corporate America, they may be able to nudge state and local government toward new economic development strategies. More

Seeking clues to heart disease in the DNA of an unlucky family. Early heart disease ran in Rick Del Sontro’s family, and every time he went for a run, he was scared his heart would betray him. So he did all he could to improve his odds. He kept himself lean, stayed away from red meat, spurned cigarettes.... More

Hidden threats to young athletes. In February, hundreds of youth sports safety advocates convened at a Washington hotel. They were determined to talk about something other than concussions, a counterintuitive ambition considering the rampant worry about the effects of head.... More

On a college wait list? Sending cookies won't help. When Amanda Wolfbauer, a high school senior, received the admissions verdict from Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y., she posted on Twitter, “What does one do once they’re on a college waitlist? #frustrated #worsethanrejection.” More

The long shadow of bad credit in a job search. THE first couple of times Alfred J. Carpenter was turned down for a job, he didn’t know what to think. He been laid off early in the recession and then had the bad fortune of tearing tendons in his knee just when he didn’t have health.... More

Obama calls on Congress to help more homeowners. President Barack Obama says Congress must give more homeowners the chance to refinance their mortgages to save money. Obama says more than 2 million people are saving about $3,000 a year after restructuring their loans under his administration.... More

Union notice rule loses in appeals court. In another blow to the nation’s dwindling labor unions, an appeals court this week struck down a federal rule that would have required millions of businesses to put up posters informing workers of their right to form a union. More

Boston survivors begin next phase of their recovery. Paul Norden needs a break. He is winded, sweating heavily after a stint on a stationary bicycle and the slow walk to a padded treatment table. It is hard work for Norden, who lost his right leg that Monday afternoon in April. “I used to say,.... More

Budget denied, Sebelius turns to health execs to finance Obamacare. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has gone, hat in hand, to health industry officials, asking them to make large financial donations to help with the effort to implement President Obama’s landmark health-care law, two.... More

Why federal efforts to ensure clean tap water fail to reach faucets.... Laura Garcia was halfway through the breakfast dishes when the spigot went dry. Still, as annoying as that was, it was an improvement over the days before Ms. Garcia got her water filter, when she had to do her dishes using water from.... More

In historic vote, Minnesota House approves gay marriage bill. With cheers and protests thundering through the Capitol, the Minnesota House on Thursday took a historic step toward legalizing same-sex marriage. The bill passed 75-59 with resounding DFL support and the votes of four Republicans. The measure.... More

Fast-food workers in Detroit join a growing wave of walkouts over wages. Hundreds of fast-food workers in Detroit are poised to walk off their jobs on Friday, joining a growing wave of protest against the wages paid in one of the most rapidly growing segment of the nation’s labor market. More

As Latinos make gains in education, gaps remain. After lagging behind other Americans in education for generations, Latinos have significantly narrowed the gap, and last year they passed a milestone, with new Hispanic high school graduates more likely than their white counterparts to go.... More

Bills would prevent rise in student loan rates. Congress now has an array of legislative options to prevent the interest rate on student loans from doubling to 6.8 percent on July 1, as scheduled. With student loans topping $1.1 trillion — and held by one in five American households —.... More

Owning a dog is linked to reduced heart risk. The nation’s largest cardiovascular health organization has a new message for Americans: Owning a dog may protect you from heart disease. The unusual message was published on Thursday by the American Heart Association, which convened a panel.... More

Three kidnapped Ohio women endured decade of isolation, rape, beatings. An ex-school bus driver accused in the abduction ordeal of three young Ohio women was due in court on Thursday to face charges he kidnapped and raped the victims, who authorities said were held captive in the dungeon-like confines of his house.... More

Jobless claims fall to lowest level in almost five-and-a-half years. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits dropped to its lowest level in nearly 5-1/2 years last week, signaling labor market resilience in the face of fiscal austerity. More

Economists see deficit emphasis as impeding recovery. The nation’s unemployment rate would probably be nearly a point lower, roughly 6.5 percent, and economic growth almost two points higher this year if Washington had not cut spending and raised taxes as it has since 2011, according to.... More

More errors in checks meant to aid homeowners. Three weeks after checks sent to homeowners as compensation for foreclosure abuses were rejected for insufficient funds, the consulting firm at the center of the mishap erred again: a fresh round of checks was written for the wrong amounts. More

It's lunchtime; let's dance. When lunchtime comes around, Laurie Batista often grabs a salad near the Flatiron ad agency where she works as an executive assistant and eats it at her desk. But shortly after noon on a sunny, 65-degree Friday in April, Ms. Batista, 31,.... More

Setting work boundaries can increase happiness. Creating good work boundaries helps protect you and increases your happiness at work. However, most employees have difficulty defining what a boundary is and how to set one. A boundary can be a physical or emotional parameter that you set.... More

Many part-timers to lose pay amid health act's new math. Many part-timers are facing a double whammy from President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The law requires large employers offering health insurance to include part-time employees working 30 hours a week or more. But rather than provide health.... More

No easy path to slimness, patients say of weight-loss procedure. The standard knock on weight-loss surgery is that it amounts to taking the easy way out. But people interviewed on Tuesday who have had the same type of surgery as Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey say it is not so. More

In California, push for college diversity starts earlier. As the Supreme Court weighs a case that could decide the future of affirmative action in college admissions, California offers one glimpse of a future without it. California was one of the first states to abolish affirmative action, after.... More

Hospital billing varies wildly, government data shows. A hospital in Livingston, N.J., charged $70,712 on average to implant a pacemaker, while a hospital in nearby Rahway, N.J., charged $101,945. In Saint Augustine, Fla., one hospital typically billed nearly $40,000 to remove a gallbladder using.... More

Teacher pay hurt by recession, report says. During the recession and its aftermath, public schools took a hit as both state coffers and local property taxes shriveled. That showed up in shrinking employment, but also in teacher salaries. More

Obstacles for pregnant women seeking dental care. In pain because of infected teeth, Luatany Caseres, 34, then a factory worker in Durham, N.C., was desperate to see a dentist. At an emergency dental clinic that treats the uninsured, a receptionist told Ms. Caseres that the schedule was full..... More

Changing sex, and changing teams. LOS ANGELES — Not so long ago, Toni Bias dreamed of playing in the W.N.B.A. But after starring on the girls’ junior varsity basketball team as a high school freshman, Toni came out as transgender last summer, began going by the name Tony.... More

A whistle, a punch and a soccer referee is dead. A little more than a week after a 17-year-old soccer player punched a recreation-league referee in the head in suburban Salt Lake City, the referee is dead, the player faces charges, and youth sports are left with questions about the seeming.... More

Workers claim race bias as farms rely on immigrants. VIDALIA, Ga. — For years, labor unions and immigrant rights activists have accused large-scale farmers, like those harvesting sweet Vidalia onions here this month, of exploiting Mexican guest workers. Working for hours on end under a.... More

Motor vehicle crashes: a little-known risk to returning combat veterans. For men and women who have fought in the country’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, death behind the wheel is becoming another lethal aftereffect of combat. After they leave military service, veterans of the two wars have a 75 percent higher.... More

Sucking your child's pacifier clean may have benefits. For years, health officials have told parents not to share utensils with their babies or clean their pacifiers by putting them in their mouths, arguing that the practice spreads harmful germs between parent and child. But new research may turn.... More

A new way to care for young brains. The drumbeat of alarming stories linking concussions among football players and other athletes to brain disease has led to a new and mushrooming American phenomenon: the specialized youth sports concussion clinic, which one day may be as common.... More

Stories of struggle and creativity, as sequestration cuts hit home. Facing the task of cutting 142 children from the Head Start program in Colorado Springs this fall, the teachers and administrators came up with a creative response: Have the children decorate empty chairs, then sell them for $500 apiece to.... More

A musical message for children on healthy eating. For all her talent and determination to help children eat better, Michelle Obama could still pick up a few pointers from Helen Butleroff-Leahy, a 66-year-old former Rockette turned registered dietitian.  Ms. Butleroff-Leahy devotes her time.... More

Report: Graduates of for-profits have more debt. Students who graduate from Minnesota for-profit colleges are saddled with more debt than those who attended public or nonprofit schools. Nine of 10 students who earned a four-year degree in 2010 from a for-profit school left with student loan.... More

Most women back over-the-counter birth control. Close to two-thirds of women favor making contraceptive pills available over the counter, according to a new nationally-representative survey. In addition, about 30 percent of women using either no birth control or a less effective method -.... More

Unemployment report shows rates looking up for veterans. The report on the nation's unemployment rate contained some good news for veterans. For all veterans, the jobless rate in April was 6.2 percent, significantly lower than the general population’s and less than the 7.1 percent of veterans who.... More

Cyberparenting and the risk of T.M.I. It may be a timeless curse of parenthood to know simultaneously too much about one’s teenager and yet never access the information one actually wants. But the unruly morass of today’s social media and cellphone-infested landscape seems to.... More

College graduates fare well in jobs market, even through recession. Is college worth it? Given the growing price tag and the frequent anecdotes about jobless graduates stuck in their parents’ basements, many have started to question the value of a college degree. But the evidence suggests college graduates.... More

Mayo Clinic study explains post-menopausal belly fat. Weight was never a concern for Stephanie Brondani, 52, of Minnetonka. Until last year, when she hit menopause. Suddenly, she noticed her midsection thickening. “I think everybody feels [like], ‘I’m eating the same way I always have been.... More

Rhode Island now 10th state to allow gay marriage as hundreds cheer. Rhode Island has become the nation's 10th state to allow gay and lesbian couples to wed, after a 16-year effort to extend marriage rights in this heavily Roman Catholic state. Gays, lesbians, their friends and families erupted into cheers.... More

12 countries where the government regulates what you can name your child. New Zealand released an updated list of its legally forbidden baby names this week, sparking some controversy among people who apparently think “4real” and “Lucifer” should not be banned, or maybe just that the state shouldn’t be in.... More

Suicide rates rise sharply in U.S. Suicide rates among middle-aged Americans have risen sharply in the past decade, prompting concern that a generation of baby boomers who have faced years of economic worry and easy access to prescription painkillers may be particularly.... More

U.S. added 165,000 jobs in April. The United States economy created 165,000 jobs in April, slightly more than forecasters had estimated, pushing the unemployment rate down modestly to 7.5 percent, the government reported Friday. More

Food and skin allergies increase in children, survey shows; health.... Parents are reporting more skin and food allergies in their children, a big government survey found. Experts aren’t sure what’s behind the increase. Could it be that children are growing up in households so clean that it leaves them more.... More

Warren Buffett calls for men to boost women in business. The key to America's future success lies in helping women achieve as much as their male counterparts, billionaire investor Warren Buffett said in an essay published on Thursday that echoes a recent debate about gender roles in Corporate.... More

Jobless claims fall sharply to five-year low. The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits fell sharply last week to its lowest level since the early days of the 2007-09 recession, suggesting the job market is still healing despite weakness in the broader economy. More

Cancers share gene patterns, studies affirm. Scientists have discovered that the most dangerous cancer of the uterine lining closely resembles the worst ovarian and breast cancers, providing the most telling evidence yet that cancer will increasingly be seen as a disease defined.... More

Cellphone thefts grow, but the industry looks the other way. When a teenage boy snatched the iPhone out of Rose Cha’s hand at a bus stop in the Bronx in March, she reported the theft to her carrier and to the police — just as she had done two other times when she was the victim of cellphone theft..... More

U.S. to defend age limits on morning-after pills. The Obama administration moved Wednesday to keep girls under 15 from having over-the-counter access to morning-after pills, as the Justice Department filed a notice to appeal a judge’s order that would make the drug available without a.... More

Drug agency lowers age for next-day birth control. The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that it would make the most widely known morning-after pill available without a prescription to girls and women ages 15 and older, and also make the pill available on drugstore shelves, instead of.... More

The problem of breast pain in women who exercise. In the days before the London Marathon last year, scientists from the Research Group in Breast Health at the University of Portsmouth in England approached female racers at the event’s registration center and asked them to complete an.... More

Craving wi-fi, preferably free and really fast. TRAVELERS hitting the road with their mobile electronic devices have three questions about staying connected away from home: will there be Wi-Fi, how much will it cost and how well will it work? More

Push to include gay couples in immigration bill. This has been a good year for gay rights advocates — with public opinion shifting in their favor and same-sex marriage advancing in the states — but not when it comes to immigration. More

Colleges tackle illicit use of attention-deficit drugs. FRESNO, Calif. — Lisa Beach endured two months of testing and paperwork before the student health office at her college approved a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Then, to get a prescription for Vyvanse, a standard.... More

Study: no shortage of STEM graduates after all. If there’s one thing that everyone can agree on in Washington, it’s that the country has a woeful shortage of workers trained in science, technology, engineering and math — what’s referred to as STEM. But a new study finds that the.... More

Next big challenge for health law: carrying it out. WASHINGTON — This month, a political organization aligned with House Republicans sent an e-mail to reporters attacking President Obama’s health care law. “Young adults on parents’ plan pay more,” said the organization, the YG.... More

European unemployment sets another record PARIS — The euro zone jobless rate rose to a record 12.1 percent in March, a sharp reminder that unemployment remains among the region’s biggest problems. More

Groundbreaking surgery gives girl a windpipe. PEORIA, Ill. — Using plastic fibers and human cells, doctors have built and implanted a windpipe in a 2 ½-year-old girl — the youngest person ever to receive a bioengineered organ. More

Colleges adapt online courses to ease students' burden. SAN JOSE, Calif. — Dazzled by the potential of free online college classes, educators are now turning to the gritty task of harnessing online materials to meet the toughest challenges in American higher education: giving more students access.... More

Disabled students face dangerous discipline in Minnesota. A 10-year-old autistic boy was pinned to the floor and held facedown for 57 minutes by three staff members at his school after he threw a tantrum while working on a puzzle in his special education classroom. Another boy with autism who caused.... More

White apathy, energized black voters, doomed Romney in 2012. America's blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time, reflecting a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks strongly supported Barack Obama.... More

The navigator: Finding the best possible flight experience. If you fly, chances are you have a story to tell about an uncomfortable airline seat. Vicki Morwitz does. Hers involves a long-haul plane trip, a minuscule economy-class enclosure and a circuitous routing that deposited her at her destination.... More

Austerity is hurting our health, say researchers. Austerity is having a devastating effect on health in Europe and North America, driving suicide, depression and infectious diseases and reducing access to medicines and care, researchers said on Monday. More

Consumer spending up, inflation pressures muted. Consumer spending unexpectedly rose in March as benign inflation supported household's spending power, a hopeful sign for an economy that lost significant momentum towards the end of the first quarter. More

D.C. cycling boom prompts a wave of non-pedaling adults to sign up for.... When they were kids, they could only watch as their friends pedaled off. In college, they saw other students go ten-speeding around campus. As grown-up Washingtonians, increasingly surrounded by bike lanes, bike commuters and bike-share.... More

GOP moves away from entitlements and toward tax reform in budget deal. With another fight over the national debt brewing this summer, congressional Republicans are de-emphasizing their demand for politically painful cuts to retirement programs and focusing on a more popular prize: a thorough rewrite of the U.S..... More

Retirees feel squeeze from pension loans To retirees, the offers can sound like the answer to every money worry: convert tomorrow’s pension checks into today’s hard cash. But these offers, known as pension advances, are having devastating financial consequences for a growing.... More

Immigrants pay lower fees to send money home, helping to ease poverty. The first time Carmen Gonzalez sent money back to her family inMexico, in 1991, Western Union charged her a $12 fee to wire $100. She earned that $12 working for six hours in a clothing factory in midtown Manhattan, which paid her $2 an hour. More

In the season of marriage, a question: why bother? IT’S surprising how many people still marry. As everyone knows, it’s a risky proposition; the divorce rate, though down from its peak of one in two marriages in the early 1980s, remains substantial. Besides, you can have a perfectly.... More

For 'professional princesses,' birthday-party gigs are big business. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, Cinderella was on the phone with her next client. “Are you ready? Everybody there? Okay, here I come.” The princess put away her cellphone, gave her crown a final tweak and climbed out of her Kia, ready to rock.... More

Internet sales tax coming too late for some stores. Anita Demetropoulos, a Maine shopkeeper, figured she would never see the day when her most relentless competitor, Amazon, would be forced to collect sales tax. Now that Congress seems ready to do that, she is no longer sure it matters. More

Pushing the G.O.P. to support gay rights. When the Rhode Island State Senate tallied up the votes against a same-sex marriage bill passed there on Wednesday, something was missing: Republicans. All five of the chamber’s Republican lawmakers had voted for the bill, stunning.... More

Bound for U.S., migrants flow into Mexico. CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — With her leg snapped and folded excruciatingly over her shoulder, Elvira López Hernández lay flat on a railroad bed as the freight train hurtled above her, clinging tightly to two things: the railroad ties beneath.... More

A racial divide closes as students step up. ABBEVILLE, Ga. — Mareshia Rucker watched in frustration last weekend as several dozen classmates in tuxedos and gowns walked into an Art Deco theater for her high school’s “white prom.” Like all black students at Wilcox County High.... More

U.S. tourists swim for nearly 14 hours after boat sinks near St. Lucia. SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The fishing trip off the rugged north coast of St. Lucia was supposed to last all day, but about four hours into the journey, the boat's electric system crackled and popped.  Dan Suski, a 30-year-old business owner and.... More

Flooding shows safe deposit boxes not entirely safe. After flooding filled the basement vault of a Northfield bank, William Hielscher arrived to inventory the contents of his mother's safe-deposit box — one of a few hundred that had been exposed to floodwaters several days earlier. More

Senate passes bill to end air traffic control furloughs. The Senate moved quickly late on Thursday to end air traffic controller furloughs that were causing widespread airline flight delays related to last month's automatic federal spending cuts. More

Obesity tied to prostate cancer risk. A new study adds to evidence that obese men may have an increased risk for future prostate cancer. Researchers studied biopsies of 6,692 cancer-free men, 11 percent of whom had precancerous lesions. More

U.S. economy speeds up, but less than forecast. The American economy sped up in the first quarter of this year, with output expanding at an annual pace of 2.5 percent, according to a Commerce Department report released Friday. The number was lower than the 3 percent forecasters had been.... More

Senators quietly seeking new path on gun control. Talks to revive gun control legislation are quietly under way on Capitol Hill as a bipartisan group of senators seeks a way to bridge the differences that led to last week’s collapse of the most serious effort to overhaul the country’s gun.... More

Pressured by Senate Democrats, White House says it's open to fix on FAA.... Under growing pressure, the Obama administration signaled Wednesday it might accept legislation eliminating Federal Aviation Administration furloughs blamed for lengthy delays affecting airline passengers, while leaving the rest of $85 billion.... More

Study: there may not be a shortage of science and tech workers after all. If there’s one thing that everyone can agree on in Washington, it’s that the country has a woeful shortage of workers trained in science, technology, engineering and math — what’s referred to as STEM. More

Eggs, too, may provoke bacteria to raise heart risk. For the second time in a matter of weeks, a group of researchers reported a link between the food people eat and bacteria in the intestines that can increase the risk of heart attacks. Two weeks ago, the investigators reported that carnitine,.... More

Study ties autism risk to creases in placenta. After most pregnancies, the placenta is thrown out, having done its job of nourishing and supporting the developing baby. But a new study raises the possibility that analyzing the placenta after birth may provide clues to a child’s risk for.... More

Our feel-good war on breast cancer. I used to believe that a mammogram saved my life. I even wrote that in the pages of this magazine. It was 1996, and I had just turned 35 when my doctor sent me for an initial screening — a relatively common practice at the time — that would.... More

Durable goods orders fall broadly as factories cool. Orders for long-lasting manufactured goods recorded their biggest drop in seven months in March and a gauge of planned business spending rose modestly, adding to signs of a slowdown in factory activity. More

College ends free tuition - and an era. The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, which is one of the last tuition-free colleges in the country but has been under severe financial strain, announced on Tuesday that for the first time in more than a century it will.... More

Do we have to cool down after exercise? Do you often, if guiltily, skip cooling down after exercise? A small but soothing body of new research suggests that you aren’t missing out on much. More

Gay marriage measure advances in Rhode Island. Rhode Island took a step on Tuesday toward becoming the 10th state to approve same-sex marriage when a major legislative committee forwarded a marriage bill to the State Senate. By a vote of 7 to 4, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a.... More

A health provider finds success in keeping hospital beds empty. CHICAGO — On a stormy evening this spring, nurses at Dr. Gary Stuck’s family practice were on the phone with patients with heart ailments, asking them not to shovel snow. The idea was to keep them out of the hospital, and that effort —.... More

Furloughs affect air travel; flights fall behind again. Early-morning flights were falling behind schedule for the second straight day Tuesday at two of New York’s three big airports, signaling that the nation’s aviation system is likely to remain snarled as the furlough of air-traffic.... More

Analysis of Obama budget shows most Americans would pay more taxes. President Obama’s budget would raise taxes mainly on people earning more than $200,000 a year, although earners at nearly every income level would face a somewhat higher tax burden, according to a new nonpartisan analysis. More

How therapy can help in the golden years. Marvin Tolkin was 83 when he decided that the unexamined life wasn’t worth living. Until then, it had never occurred to him that there might be emotional “issues” he wanted to explore with a counselor. More

Protests grow in France over same-sex marriage bill. PARIS — On Tuesday afternoon, France is expected to become the 14th country to legalize marriage for all couples, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. The final vote in the legislature is expected to be quick. More

In New York, adult daycare centers lure fit elders and bill Medicare. Scores of elderly Russian immigrants played bingo under the chandeliers of a former funeral parlor in Brooklyn on a recent Monday, with a free dinner and door-to-door transportation from anywhere in the city. More

Ahead of reform, medical care slowdown hits companies. As the clock ticks down to the start of a U.S. healthcare overhaul, companies from device makers to hospital chains have been surprised to see Americans make even fewer trips to the doctor's office. More

Wall Street betting billions on single-family homes in distressed areas. MIAMI — Big investors are pouring unprecedented amounts of money into real estate hard hit by the housing crash, bringing those moribund markets back to life but raising the prospect of another Wall Street-fueled bubble that won’t be.... More

Cancer centers are racing to map their patients' genes. Electric fans growl like airplanes taking off and banks of green lights wink in a basement at Mount Sinai’s medical school, where a new $3 million supercomputer makes quick work of huge amounts of genetic and other biological information. More

Restyled as real estate trusts, varied businesses avoid taxes. A small but growing number of American corporations, operating in businesses as diverse as private prisons, billboards and casinos, are making an aggressive move to reduce — or even eliminate — their federal tax bills. More

Beleaguered caregivers getting help from apps. As her mother and father edged toward dementia, Nancy D'Auria kept a piece of paper in her wallet listing their medications. It had the dosages, the time of day each should be taken and a check mark when her folks, who live 10 miles away,.... More

Advocates defend tax initiatives for retirement savings. As federal policymakers search for ways to trim the nation’s long-term deficit, they are increasingly eyeing a piece of the estimated $136 billion in tax incentives for retirement savings. The vast majority of this sum goes toward.... More

Immigration reform promising for farm workers. California farm worker Antonia Espinoza would likely be throwing in the towel and heading back to her native Mexico to see her children, if not for the work of eight U.S. senators in Washington. More

Companies substitute tangibles, like cheese, for investments. As companies struggle to close the gaps between what they owe to their pension funds and what they think they can pay, they are in some cases turning to unusual assets that they hope will make up part of the difference. More

Measuring college prestige vs. cost of enrollment. Having a choice is generally a good thing, and being able to choose among several college acceptances should be a wonderful thing indeed. But let’s face it: the cost of a college education these days ranges from expensive to obscenely.... More

Part-time work becomes full-time wait for better job. The American economy has generated 30 straight months of job growth. But for millions of people looking for more work and greater income, that improvement provides little solace. In March, 7.6 million Americans who want more hours were stuck.... More

How the ban on earmarks killed the gun control bill. Washington used to be a place where lawmakers openly traded votes for both concrete and symbolic concessions from the executive branch, whether it was a project in a member’s district or simply the president’s presence at a specific event..... More

Activists cheer as Montana formally decriminalizes gay sex. Montana's governor on Thursday signed into law a bill that formally decriminalizes homosexual sex, a move gay rights activists in the state called a watershed moment in their battle for equality. More

Despite friction, University chancellor sees his plan succeeding. Looking to lift the University of Texas System out of a roiling debate over higher education reform in 2011, its chancellor, Francisco G. Cigarroa, sat down with a small group of advisers for nearly two days to shape a plan to move the system.... More

Two more colleges accused of mishandling sexual assaults. Swarthmore and Occidental Colleges on Thursday joined the list of elite institutions accused of mistreating victims of sexual assault and harassment, and activists say they are preparing similar accusations against other well-known colleges. More

Non-invasive cancer test is effective, study finds. A new noninvasive screening test can detect most cases of colorectal cancer and also many precancerous polyps, potentially helping to sharply reduce the death toll from the disease, according to results of a study released on Thursday. More

High Court limits warrantless blood tests for drunken driving suspects. Police officers generally must try to get a warrant before forcing uncooperative drunken-driving suspects to submit to a blood test, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. More

Teen 'sexting' case goes to trial in Fairfax County. Three Fairfax County high school students made cellphone videos of drunken sex acts with fellow teens and shared them among themselves, authorities said. When they go on trial Thursday, they face a charge usually reserved for adult predators:.... More

More college applicants aren't welcome till winter. Elizabeth Bricker of Rumson, N.J., was still half-asleep when her mother came into her room two weeks ago carrying an envelope from the University of Southern California. Even through the haze of spring break, she could see that the envelope.... More

Videos said to show clear images of two bombing suspects. As Boston prepared to mourn the victims of the marathon bombings at an interfaith service with President Obama on Thursday morning, investigators had found clear video images of two separate suspects carrying black bags at the site of each.... More

Gun control effort had no real chance, despite pleas. President Obama, his face set with rage, stood in the Rose Garden surrounded by the families of Newtown and former Representative Gabrielle Giffords and asked how a measure to expand background checks for gun buyers — one supported by an.... More

Why we're motivated to exercise. Or not. If you give a rat a running wheel and it decides not to use it, are genes to blame? And if so, what does that tell us about why many people skip exercise? More

Surgeons saved lives, if not legs, after blasts. So many patients arrived at once, with variations of the same gruesome leg injuries. Shattered bones, shredded tissue, nails burrowed deep beneath the flesh. The decision had to be made, over and over, with little time to deliberate. Should.... More

Senate sets crucial votes on gun measures, some expanding rights. The Senate will vote Wednesday afternoon on a series of gun measures that may determine the shape of legislation inspired by the shootings in Newtown, Conn. A measure to expand background checks for gun buyers, seemed all but doomed. More

Rising work-life balance concerns tied to turnover around the globe, says.... More than one in four employees (27 percent) at organizations that are not perceived to support work-life balance plan to leave their companies within the next two years, according to new research from Hay Group, the global management.... More

Workers share their salary secrets. At Brian Bader's orientation for a tech-support job with Apple Inc. three years ago, he says, human-resources managers ran down the list of guidelines workers were expected to follow. Don't use explicit language on calls with customers..... More

Climate scientists struggle to explain global warming slowdown. Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions. More

Boston hospitals scramble to care for wounded after blasts. At Boston Children's Hospital, the list of the wounded included a 2-year-old boy with a head injury, a 9-year-old girl with leg trauma and six other children under the age of 15. More

A battle plan to lose weight. Laura Ward, 41, had always attributed her excess pounds to the drugs she takes for major depression. So Ms. Ward, who is 5-foot-6 and once weighed 220 pounds, didn’t try to slim down or avoid dietary pitfalls like fried chicken. More

Gasoline, food prices subdue consumer inflation Consumer prices fell in March for the first time in four months as the cost of gasoline tumbled, providing scope for the Federal Reserve to maintain its monetary stimulus to speed up economic growth. More

Immigration overhaul proposal is likely to ignite fierce debate. The introduction of sweeping immigrationlegislation on Tuesday is likely to ignite a months-long battle between those who want citizenship for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants and opponents who view such an approach as amnesty. More

Abnormal is the new normal. Although fewer than 6 percent of American adults will have a severe mental illness in a given year, according to a 2005 study, many more—more than a quarter each year—will have some diagnosable mental disorder. That’s a lot of people. More

Focus on standardized testing leads to 'opt-out' parents' movement. A decade into the school accountability movement, pockets of resistance to standardized testing are sprouting up around the country, with parents and students opting out of the high-stakes tests used to evaluate schools and teachers. More

Students face tougher tests that outpace lesson plans. At Public School 10 on the edge of Park Slope, Brooklyn, parents begged the principal to postpone the lower school science fair, insisting it was going to add too much pressure while they were preparing their children for the coming state.... More

A Missouri school trains its teachers to carry guns, and most parents.... WEST PLAINS, Mo. — At 8:30 on a cloudy, frigid morning late last month in this folksy Ozark town, the superintendent of an area school strolled through the glass doors of the local newspaper office to deliver a news release. More

Rifts in both parties complicate odds for gun measure. WASHINGTON — Deep divisions within both parties over a bipartisan measure to extend background checks for gun buyers are threatening its chances as the Senate this week begins debating the first broad gun control legislation in nearly 20.... More

For women, mentors are good, sponsors are better. AS Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook tells it, what accounts for her spectacular leap to leadership is her unfettered embrace of career opportunity. By “leaning in,” she maintains in her new book, she has been able to join the male-dominated.... More

For Evangelicals, a shift in views on immigration. ORLANDO, Fla. — In the pews of the First Baptist Church of Orlando, where thousands of evangelical Christians gather on Sundays to worship and sing, a change of heart is happening on the once toxic issue of immigration. More

Obama's budget revives benefits as divisive issue. WASHINGTON — Whether or not Republicans ever agree to a budget deal with President Obama, one thing seems certain: now that he has officially put Social Security and Medicare benefits on the negotiating table, opponents on his party’s.... More

French Senate approves same-sex marriage. PARIS — The French Senate on Friday approved a bill to allow same-sex couples to wed and adopt children, leaving France poised to join the small group of nations that have fully legalized gay marriage, despite an unexpectedly vocal campaign.... More

J.C. Penney wins ruling in dispute with Macy's. With Ron Johnson out, Martha Stewart is in at J. C. Penney, at least for the moment. In a contract dispute brought byMacy’s against Penney’s and Ms. Stewart’s company, a judge ruled on Friday that Penney’s could temporarily sell.... More

Signs of easier money for mortgages. What was so unusual about Phillip Ratliff’s experience in getting approval for his first mortgage was that it wasn’t difficult at all — even though he could afford a down payment of only 5 percent. More

Experiment in Oregon gives Medicaid very local roots. SALEM, Ore. — Some say America has been homogenized, a chain-store nation bereft of regional distinction in dialect or dinner. But now this state, at the pioneer’s end of the road, is testing the idea that local community difference is.... More

In gun debate, agreement on better care for mentally ill. While the Senate has been consumed with a divisive debate over expanded background checks for gun buyers, lawmakers have been quietly working across party lines on legislation that advocates say could help prevent killers like Adam Lanza, the.... More

School vote stirs debate on girls as leaders. ANDOVER, Mass. — When the elite Phillips Academy here went coed in 1973, some worried that women would quickly take over this venerable institution, the alma mater of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Samuel Morse and Humphrey Bogart, not to mention.... More

Major sports leagues prepare for the 'I'm gay' disclosure. With growing expectations in recent weeks that a gay male athlete in one of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States will soon come out publicly for the first time, the leagues have begun exploring ways to accommodate and respond to such a landmark announcement. More

Universities add courses in hot new field: data science. HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW calls data science “the sexiest job in the 21st century,” and by most accounts this hot new field promises to revolutionize industries from business to government, health care to academia. More

FDA finds new safety problems at 30 specialized pharmacies. Federal inspectors have found dozens of potentially dangerous safety problems at 30 specialized pharmacies, months after tainted steroid shots made by a Massachusetts pharmacy triggered the worst drug disaster in decades. More

Retail sales unexpectedly fall in March. Retail sales contracted in March for the second time in three months, a sign the American economy may have stumbled at the end of the first quarter. Retail sales fell 0.4 percent during the month, the Commerce Department said on Friday. More

Tech firms push to hire more workers from abroad. SAN FRANCISCO — Vishal Sankhla, an Indian engineer, is among those at the center of a storm over how to fix the nation’s immigration system. Mr. Sankhla got a master’s degree in electrical engineering nine years ago from the University.... More

With police in schools, more children in court system. HOUSTON — As school districts across the country consider placing more police officers in schools, youth advocates and judges are raising alarm about what they have seen in the schools where officers are already stationed: a surge in criminal.... More

Big brain projects highlight drug research gaps. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic are placing big new bets on the future of brain science, just as much of the pharmaceutical industry retreats from the field. Brain disorders ranging from depression to Alzheimer's are extracting an.... More

Japan carmakers recall 3.4 million vehicles for Takata airbag flaw. Four Japanese automakers including Toyota Motor Corp, and Nissan Motor Co are recalling 3.4 million vehicles sold around the world because airbags supplied by Takata Corp are at risk of catching fire or injuring passengers. More

Senate to start votes on gun control measure. Two senators who brokered a breakthrough deal to expand background checks on gun buyers said they expected to defeat efforts to block the bill as the Senate takes up its first vote on gun-control legislation on Thursday. More

Jobless claims data calms labor market jitters. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, which eased fears of a marked deterioration in labor market conditions after a surprise stumble in job growth in March. More

Senate immigration plan creates complex road to citizenship. An immigration bill being written in the Senate aims to wipe out nearly all illegal crossings along the southwestern border with Mexico while maintaining a 13-year timetable for existing illegal residents to win citizenship, sources said on.... More

Obama budget targets millionaires, replaces sequester cuts. The White House on Wednesday proposed a budget that would sharply trim the U.S. deficit over three years by forcing millionaires to pay more in taxes and enacting spending cuts that replace the "sequester" reductions that went into place last.... More

'Obama phones' subsidy program draws new scrutiny on the Hill. When someone in the Washington area begins to type the president’s last name into the search box of Google’s home page, the top three terms it suggests as the most popular selections are Obama, Obamacare and .?.?. Obama phone. More

Senate aides: bipartisan deal reached on gun background checks. A bipartisan group of senators has struck a deal to expand gun background checks to all commercial sales — whether at gun shows, via the Internet or in any circumstance involving paid advertising, according to Senate aides familiar with the.... More

Facebook grabs for your phone. What gives? Facebook, man. Unbelievable. Second-most-visited Web site in the world. Frequented monthly by one-sixth of the earth’s population. Primary source of news for half of America’s young people. More

Getting a brain boost through exercise. Two new experiments, one involving people and the other animals, suggest that regular exercise can substantially improve memory, although different types of exercise seem to affect the brain quite differently. More

Help Georgia students end segregated proms. If you're one of the millions of Americans who have too much on their plate, I'm going to do the writing equivalent of serving dessert first. There are some high school students who need our help. They're throwing the first integrated prom in.... More

Web start-up threatens to alter TV landscape. For consumers who want to cut their cable cord and get all of their television from the Internet, there’s been a major obstacle: It’s hard to get live sports and local news. Now a Web start-up, called Aereo, is offering to remove that last.... More

As workload overwhelms, cars are set to intervene. Heading south on Route 34 toward Jersey Shore beaches on a summer weekend, drivers confront a daunting array of highway quirks, not limited to jughandle intersections and baffling exit signs. More

No lawyer for miles, so one rural state offers pay. MARTIN, S.D. — Rural Americans are increasingly without lawyers even as law school graduates are increasingly without jobs. Just 2 percent of small law practices are in rural areas, where nearly a fifth of the country lives, recent data show. More

Teacher knows if you've done the e-reading. SAN ANTONIO — Several Texas A&M professors know something that generations of teachers could only hope to guess: whether students are reading their textbooks. More

Mayo Clinic: for kids, avoiding risks can be risky. It was always the introduction for Georgiann Steely — the ringing of the doorbell, the approach to the man at the cash register — that made her palms sweat and knees knock. As a grade-schooler, she avoided these moments More

Airline passenger complaints surged in 2012 Airline passengers are getting grumpier, and it's little wonder. Airlines keep shrinking the size of seats to stuff more people onto planes, those empty middle seats that once provided a little more room are now occupied and more people with.... More

With fresh Republican support, gun legislation prospects improve. Prospects for a bipartisan deal to expand federal background checks for gun purchases are improving with the emergence of fresh Republican support, according to top Senate aides. The possibility that after weeks of stalled negotiations.... More

Yes, healthful fast food is possible. But is it edible? When my daughter was a teenager, about a dozen years ago, she went through a vegetarian phase. Back then, the payoff for orthodontist visits was a trip to Taco Bell, where the only thing we could eat were bean burritos and tacos. More

Culprit in heart disease goes beyond meat's fat. It was breakfast time and the people participating in a study of red meat and its consequences had hot, sizzling sirloin steaks plopped down in front of them. The researcher himself bought a George Foreman grill for the occasion, and the nurse.... More

Testosterone doesn't boost functioning in older men. Older men who use testosterone gel may see small improvements in their muscle-to-fat ratio but are unlikely to glean any benefits in flexibility, endurance and general ability to get around, new research suggests. More

Worker turnover is poised to pick up, adding urgency to employers' focus.... The expected uptick in voluntary turnover, which some employers are seeing already and which experts predict will accelerate in 2013, adds increased urgency to a problem that many employers had already identified as critical: They are.... More

Discouraged Americans leave the labor force. After a full year of fruitless job hunting, Natasha Baebler just gave up. She'd already abandoned hope of getting work in her field, counseling the disabled. But she couldn't land anything else, either — not even a job interview at a.... More

For car renters, signing may mean trouble. Sandra McKinnon knew the drill after three trips from Oakland, Calif., to Tulsa, Okla., to visit her elderly father. When she went to pick up a rental car, she would have to decide whether to buy the insurance. More

In Connecticut, new firearms limits faced uphill fight. Almost from the moment that Adam Lanza ended his siege, it seemed that Connecticut, dominated by Democrats and already with some of the nation’s toughest gun laws, would quickly pass sweeping new restrictions on firearms. More

Small business groups shrug off delays to Obamacare's health care.... The Obama administration has delayed part of the health care law designed to give small business owners and employees more flexibility when purchasing insurance, which could temporarily undermine lawmakers’ intent to drive down the cost of.... More

Hiring slowed to 88K in March; unemployment drops to 7.6 percent. Businesses sharply reduced their pace of hiring in March, according to government data released Friday morning, deflating hopes that the nation’s economy is ready for takeoff. The Labor Department reported that 88,000 jobs were added last.... More

When injured athlete leaves campus, college's responsibility ends. The broken leg felt round the country — during college basketball’s showcase event — left teammates and coaches in tears and television networks turning away from video of the gruesome injury. It also inflamed the debate about the.... More

Social programs facing cutback in Obama budget. President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a.... More

Judge orders morning-after pill for all ages. A federal judge has ruled that the United States government must make the most common morning-after pill available over the counter for all ages, instead of requiring a prescription for girls 16 and under. More

As childcare costs rise, families seek alternatives. Child care costs have nearly doubled since the mid-1980s, but the portion of families paying for care has dropped, according to a newCensus Bureau report. More

Maryland House passes strict gun-control measure. The Maryland House of Delegates passed what would be among the nation’s most restrictive gun-control measures Wednesday, voting to ratchet up the state’s already tough rules by requiring fingerprinting of gun buyers, new limits on firearm.... More

Cancer clinics turning away thousands of Medicare patients. Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts. Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer.... More

In state that knows the gun debate, the President urges both sides to.... DENVER — As his gun control legislation struggled back in Washington, President Obama pleaded on Wednesday for understanding from the opposing forces of a debate that has grown polarized since the December massacre of 20 young children in.... More

Claims for U.S. jobless benefits rise. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose to its highest level in four months last week, suggesting the labor market recovery lost some steam in March. More

Dimentia care costs predicted to double by 2040. The most rigorous study to date of how much it costs to care for Americans with dementia found that the financial burden is at least as high as that of heart disease or cancer, and is probably higher. And both the costs and the number of.... More

Wall Street's women are not so timid any more. Wall Street’s women are more aware of their rights and are not so timid anymore, says Linda D. Friedman, a partner at Stowell & Friedman. Still, she says her firm does a lot of work these days behind the scenes, assisting women who face.... More

Why so few women reach the executive rank. Here is a puzzle. If the bulk of studies show that women are a net plus to corporate America, why are they still a small minority on Wall Street and in the executive suite? More

Women lead the way in white-collar law. It’s still a man’s world in many sectors of the legal profession, as it is in much of corporate America. It’s true for prosecutors, for white-collar defense partners at major firms and in executive suites. But when it comes to researching.... More

A suite of their own; women in a man's world. Women make up more than half of the work force on Wall Street. But breaking into the highest ranks is still largely a man’s sport. Women account for just 3 percent of the chief executives in finance, according to the consulting firm.... More

Tennessee takes on failing schools in a crucible of change. In Memphis, a Mississippi River town marked by pockets of entrenched poverty, some of the worst schools in the state are in the midst of a radical experiment in reinventing public education. More

Incentives for men, to help women work. As I wrote in an article appearing this week in The New York Times Magazine, if you want women to be bigger participants in the labor force, some expansion of work-life accommodations (parental leave, flex work, telecommuting, etc.) is.... More

The G.O.P.'s gay marriage catch-22 Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said he thinks it’s “inevitable” that a GOP presidential candidate will someday support gay marriage. And Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus advised the GOP against acting like “Old.... More

Small firms' offer plan choices under health law delayed. Unable to meet tight deadlines in the new health care law, the Obama administration is delaying parts of a program intended to provide affordable health insurance to small businesses and their employees — a major selling point for the.... More

Lean in, Dad: how shared diaper duty could stimulate the economy. I happen to be an educated young woman who loves her job, sometimes gushingly, occasionally annoyingly. And yet, even in this enlightened age, I’ve had two relationships end — at least in large part — thanks to that clammy-palmed.... More

Legislators in Connecticut agree on farthest-reaching gun laws. HARTFORD — More than three months after the massacre of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., state legislative leaders announced on Monday that they had agreed on what they called the most far-reaching gun-legislation.... More

Unemployment in Euro zone reaches record high of 12%. PARIS — Unemployment in the euro zone rose to yet another record high in the first two months of the year, official data showed Tuesday, providing confirmation that the economy remains in a deep freeze. More

A D.C. doctor blogs about his decline as Alzheimer's claims his mind. In a rented car on a rural road, David Hilfiker glanced at the Google map he printed before leaving his District apartment and turned where it said to turn. The retired doctor drove this way for three and a half hours, eyes darting between.... More

More colleges break the news to would-be students online. Jenna Kress sat down at her computer one recent evening to check the status of her application to the University of Georgia. The 17-year-old senior at Walt Whitman High School in Montgomery County let out a scream when video fireworks lighted.... More

India rejects Novartis drug patent. NEW DELHI — India’s Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Swiss pharmaceutical company’s effort to patent an updated version of its cancer drug, a decision aimed at boosting a domestic generic drug manufacturing industry that supplies cheap.... More

New attitude on immigration skips an old coal town. HAZLETON, Pa. — Before Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, before “self-deportation” became the Republican presidential platform in 2012, there was Hazleton, a town that made life so difficult for illegal immigrants that they.... More

Nearly one in five boys diagnosed with A.D.H.D., says new data. Nearly one in five high school age boys in the United States and 11 percent of school-age children over all have received a medical diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to new data from the federal Centers for.... More

Deal paves way for immigration bill. Big Business and Big Labor cleared a big hurdle Thursday, as the Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO agreed in principle on a plan to allow “lesser skilled” immigrants to work in the U.S. legally, a key sticking point for a final deal on.... More

Changing shopping habits challenge traditional grocers. Like increasing numbers of grocery shoppers, Ty Rushmeyer doesn’t have a regular store. The 28-year-old and his wife go to Rainbow once a week, but they also stock up their pantry at Target. Then there are “fun runs” for unique products.... More

How immigration reform is scrambling American politics. The overriding fact driving almost everything that happens in American politics right now is that both elections and governance are zero-sum games between the two parties: For one side to win, the other side has to lose. The sole major.... More

We're one big team, so run those stairs. AT 12:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, the chief executive of Datalogix was spider-crawling across a conference room floor. All around him, account managers and data analysts were thrusting 20-pound medicine balls overhead, while their Spandex-clad.... More

Letting down our guard with Web privacy. SAY you’ve come across a discount online retailer promising a steal on hand-stitched espadrilles for spring. You start setting up an account by offering your e-mail address — but before you can finish, there’s a ping on your phone. A text.... More

Curious grade for teachers: nearly all pass. Across the country, education reformers and their allies in both parties have revamped the way teachers are graded, abandoning methods under which nearly everyone was deemed satisfactory, even when students were falling behind. More

Grand Jury indicts about 3 dozen Atlanta educators in cheating scandal. ATLANTA - Juwanna Guffie was sitting in her fifth-grade classroom taking a standardized test when, authorities say, the teacher came around offering information and asking the students to rewrite their answers. Juwanna rejected the help. More

HIV case in Minnesota draws national interest. Medical experts and civil liberties advocates nationwide are weighing in on the Minnesota Supreme Court case of an HIV-positive Twin Cities man convicted and later cleared of a felony for having unprotected sex, arguing that the 17-year-old.... More

Technology can affect how we dream. The dreams of Mary Shelley, author of “Frankenstein,” involved a pale student kneeling beside a corpse that was jerking back to life. Paul McCartney’s contained the melody of “Yesterday,” while director James Cameron’s inspired the.... More

Guest workers are at crux of group's deal on immigration. Washington - The nation’s top business and labor groups were near agreement Friday on a guest worker program for low-skilled immigrants, closing in on a deal that would eliminate one of the last significant obstacles to a new proposal for a.... More

Hospitals question Medicare rules on readmissions. It is no longer enough for hospitals to make patients healthy enough to leave. Now, as part of the Obama administration’s health care overhaul, they are spending millions of dollars to keep those patients from coming back, often acting like.... More

Health care law uncertainty grips businesses. Jody Manor has run a small cafe and catering company for nearly three decades in Old Town Alexandria, only a few blocks from where he was born. Six years ago he purchased an adjoining building, and more recently he started searching for a.... More

For federal workers, the furlough terrain is uneven. Every U.S. Park Police officer will be off the job for 14 days — but the national parks they patrol will be staffed. The Department of Housing and Urban Development will shut down for seven days starting in May, after concluding that.... More

Talk of Medicare changes could open way to budget pact. As they explore possible fiscal deals, President Obama and Congressional Republicans have quietly raised the idea of broad systemic changes to Medicare that could produce significant savings and end the polarizing debate over Republican.... More

Why is olive oil so good for us? It could be its scent. Why is olive oil, the crown jewel of theMediterranean diet, so good for your health Nutritionists point to its abundance of antioxidants and oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat that protects the heart. But new research suggests that some of the.... More

For Obama, DOMA presents tricky balancing act. When President Obama decided that his administration would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court, he was presented with an obvious question with a less obvious answer: Would he keep enforcing a law he now deemed.... More

Nearly three dozen homes evacuated in Washington landslide. SEATTLE - Geologists and engineers are assessing the stability of a scenic Puget Sound area after a large landslide thundered down a hillside, knocking one house off its foundation and threatening others. More

Housing program seeks to cut monthly payments. Federal housing regulators took a significant step on Wednesday toward helping borrowers who are falling behind on their mortgage payments — a move that will help more people but also introduce new risks that some homeowners could.... More

Living with cancer: the scar project. In the documentary “Baring it All,” a young woman declares, “The scar represents everything I’ve been through. I’m proud of what I’ve been through.” The film focuses on the fashion photographer David Jay, who created a pictorial.... More

With vouchers, states shift aid for schools to families. PHOENIX — A growing number of lawmakers across the country are taking steps to redefine public education, shifting the debate from the classroom to the pocketbook. More

Success on political front can be setback for gay rights. As the justices of the Supreme Court struggled with the question of same-sex marriage this week, politicians in Congress kept handing down their own verdict. One after another, a series of lawmakers in recent days endorsed allowing gay men.... More

This gadget makes our health-care projections obsolete. Scientists at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed a minuscule implant that measures various blood chemicals and sends the results, via Bluetooth, to your smart phone. The upside? Your smartphone.... More

Eating made her sick, but it took doctors years to figure out why. A year after her daughter’s stomach problems began, Margaret Kaplow began having pains of her own. When she sat down to dinner with her family, Kaplow’s gut would clench involuntarily as she waited to see if this was one of the nights.... More

New prostate cancer tests could reduce false alarms. Sophisticated new prostate cancer tests are coming to market that might supplement the unreliable P.S.A. test, potentially saving tens of thousands of men each year from unnecessary biopsies, operations and radiation treatments. More

A look at the issues in the Defense of Marriage Act case. Here is a look at the background of the case, United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307; the issues it raises; the lawyers who will argue it; and the possible outcomes. More

Court to hear arguments on Defense of Marriage Act. The Supreme Court returns to the subject of same-sex marriage for a second day on Wednesday, when the justices hear arguments about the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996. More

As sequester furloughs loom, federal workers turn to local union leaders. John Hiller knows chemistry, not counseling. Until recently, he was a Customs and Border Protection scientist checking imported goods for drugs and toxins. But a few weeks after being elected president of his union local at CBP’s Washington.... More

Harvard asks graduates to donate time to free online humanities class. Alumni of elite colleges are accustomed to getting requests for money from their alma mater, but the appeal that Harvard sent to thousands of graduates on Monday was something new: a plea to donate their time and intellects to the rapidly.... More

He has millions, and a new job at Yahoo. Soon he'll be 18. One of Yahoo’s newest employees is a 17-year-old high school student in Britain. As of Monday, he is one of its richest, too. That student, Nick D’Aloisio, a programming whiz who wasn’t even born when Yahoo was founded in 1994, sold his.... More

Rome court overturns acquittal of Amanda Knox. Italy’s highest court on Tuesday overturned a previous acquittal and ordered a new trial in the sensational case of Amanda Knox, an American exchange student accused of murdering her 21 — year-old roommate, Meredith Kercher of Britain, in.... More

Justices to hear California case on same-sex marriage ban today. The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday morning on the meaning of marriage. Two California couples challenging Proposition 8, the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, say it excludes gay and lesbian couples from an institution with a.... More

Infants are fed solid foods too soon, C.D.C. reports. Despite growing warnings from pediatricians about feeding newborns anything other than breast milk or formula, many mothers appear to be introducing solid food well before their babies’ bodies can handle it, says a study published Monday in.... More

Nurses press for doctors' authority. For years, nurses have been subordinate to doctors — both in the exam room and the political arena. But aided by new allies ranging from AARP to social workers to health-policy experts, nursing groups are pressing ahead in a controversial bid.... More

In gay marriage cases, Supreme Court may choose caution over boldness. With an overwhelming majority of state laws pointing one way and public opinion trending rapidly in the other, the Supreme Court may enter this week’s historic arguments over same-sex marriage with a preference for caution over boldness. More

Tennessee race for Medicaid: dial fast and try, try again. Two nights a year, Tennessee holds a health care lottery of sorts, giving the medically desperate a chance to get help. State residents who have high medical bills but would not normally qualify for Medicaid, the government health care.... More

Luring young Web warriors is a U.S. priority. It's also a game. WASHINGTON — In the eighth grade, Arlan Jaska figured out how to write a simple script that could switch his keyboard’s Caps Lock key on and off 6,000 times a minute. When friends weren’t looking, he slipped his program onto their.... More

What causes hearing loss? Noise, not age is the leading cause of hearing loss. Unless you take steps now to protect your ears, sooner or later many of you — and your children — will have difficulty understanding even ordinary speech. More

Rahm Emanuel on Chicago school closures: "Investing in quality education." Speaking publicly for the first time since Chicago Public Schools announced that more than 50 schools are to close, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the motive behind the plan is to ensure that all children in Chicago receive a quality education. More

NYC mayor announces $12m gun control buy targeting senators before.... NEW YORK - A new $12 million television ad campaign from Mayors Against Illegal Guns will push senators in key states to back gun control efforts, including comprehensive background checks. More

Shadow of Roe v. Wade looms over ruling on gay marriage. When the Supreme Court hears a pair of cases on same-sex marriage on Tuesday and Wednesday, the justices will be working in the shadow of a 40-year-old decision on another subject entirely: Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a.... More

Immigrants held in solitary cells, often for weeks. On any given day, about 300 immigrants are held in solitary confinement at the 50 largest detention facilities that make up the sprawling patchwork of holding centers nationwide overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials,.... More

Spring clean your professional life. In spring, we’re supposed to clean the house, organize the closets, even tackle the garage. But when’s the last time you did a spring cleaning of your professional life? More

New Jersey wins fight against a tiny invader. LINDEN, N.J. — The enemy forces were numerous, numbering in the thousands. They were particularly adept at hidden warfare. The fight, which endured for more than a decade, was complicated by the difficulty of detection, with the invader.... More

Schools urge children to bring their own electronic devices. Educators and policy makers continue to debate whether computers are a good teaching tool. But a growing number of schools are adopting a new, even more controversial approach: asking students to bring their own smartphones, tablets, laptops.... More

However justices rule on gay marriage, issues remain. A victory for gay rights in either of the two monumental cases being presented to Supreme Court Justices next week will not necessarily resolve all the complicated financial and legal issues that now confront same-sex couples. More

Young immigrants, seeking deferred action help, find unexpected path. When Angy Rivera, an illegal immigrant, was a young girl in New York City, she was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. He was eventually convicted and imprisoned, but only recently did Ms. Rivera find out that her cooperation with.... More

Resolution passes to keep government open. Congress approved a short-term funding bill Thursday that ends the possibility of a federal government shutdown next week. But a broader budget battle about taxes and spending for the year is just beginning. More

Big Bang's afterglow reveals older universe. Cosmologists have released the most detailed “baby picture” yet of the early universe, a portrait that helps answer some of the deepest questions of science while providing enough surprises to keep scientists busy for years. More

In Montana, an Indian reservation's children feel the impact of.... In Poplar, Mont. — The public schools on the isolated, windswept Fort Peck Indian reservation here are at the frontier of the federal sequester, among the first to struggle with budget cuts sweeping west from Washington. More

Special education programs steel themselves as cuts loom. Aurora Ford, a fifth-grader with Down syndrome, needs regular speech classes and occupational therapy, services that are guaranteed under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. But looming federal financing cuts could affect Aurora.... More

Once few, women gain power in Senate,. WASHINGTON — An hour before her colleagues gathered for their first vote of a new Congress, Senator Kelly Ayotte slipped into an empty Senate chamber to savor the grandeur of her legislative home. More

More young adults eschew credit cards. Samantha Henderson has heard the horror stories of young people buried by too much debt. That's why the Edgewater student doesn't have a Visa or MasterCard, limiting herself to a debit card that she uses to withdraw cash for purchases. More

The cost of being single adds up for women. Over a lifetime, unmarried women can pay as much as a million dollars more than their married counterparts for health care, taxes, and more, thanks to more than 1,000 laws that provide legal/financial benefits to married couples. Here are a few.... More

Visas for high skilled workers could double under bipartisan Senate plan. A Senate immigration plan would dramatically increase the number of high-skilled foreign workers allowed into the country and give permanent legal status to an unlimited number of students who earn graduate degrees from U.S. universities in.... More

Pediatrics group backs gay marriage, saying it helps children. The American Academy of Pediatrics declared its support for same-sex marriage for the first time on Thursday, saying that allowing gay and lesbian parents to marry if they so choose is in the best interests of their children. More

The face of future health care. OAKLAND, Calif. — When people talk about the future of health care, Kaiser Permanente is often the model they have in mind. The organization, which combines a nonprofit insurance plan with its own hospitals and clinics, is the kind of.... More

After decade of war, troops still struggling to find work. n TULSA — This is what the end of a decade of war looked like in Oklahoma a few weeks ago: ex-soldiers in cheap new business suits; human resources managers with salesman smiles and stacks of glossy fliers; a former Marine speaking to a.... More

Melanoma drug succeeds in late-stage trial. A cancer drug based on a tumor-killing virus has for the first time succeeded in a late-stage clinical trial, giving a lift to a technology that has long tantalized doctors and researchers. More

College groups connect to fight sexual assault. Frustrated and angry over the handling of sexual assault cases at Occidental College in Los Angeles, a group of students and faculty members recently decided to take the matter to the federal government as a civil rights case. More

GOP opposition to immigration law is fading away. Republican opposition to legalizing the status of millions of illegal immigrants is crumbling in the nation’s capital as leading lawmakers in the party scramble to halt eroding support among Hispanic voters — a shift that is providing.... More

On gay unions, a pragmatist before he was a Pope. BUENOS AIRES — The very idea was anathema to many of the bishops in the room. Argentina was on the verge of approving gay marriage, and the Roman Catholic Church was desperate to stop that from happening. More

Patient sues clinic for role in meningitis outbreak. A Brooklyn Park woman is suing a Twin Cities pain clinic for negligence in using contaminated steroids that were linked to a nationwide meningitis outbreak last year. More

Organic baby food; more expensive, but may not be more nutritious. Squeezable pouches of organic baby food are as omnipresent on some American playgrounds as runny noses, diaper bags and overpriced strollers. Organic baby food can cost up to twice as much as conventionally grown baby food, and it comes in such.... More

The great aid gap: a special section on continuing education IT was an unusually enthusiastic shout-out for the job certificate programs offered by many community colleges. A report found that men with non-degree certificates in computer/information services earned $72,498 a year on average More

Ban on gay marriage led lawyers to shift role. SAN FRANCISCO — Nine years ago, city officials here sued to strike down a state ban on same-sex marriage. It was the first government challenge to such a law, and it set in motion a legal chain reaction that gave rise to a momentous Supreme.... More

Senate plan would spare vital programs from cuts. WASHINGTON — The worst of the cuts in federal spending to a major infant nutrition program would be reversed. Child care subsidies, once seen as critical to the success of welfare reform, would take a haircut, not the hammer blow that.... More

Food stamps put Rhode Island town on boom and bust cycle. The economy of Woonsocket was about to stir to life. Delivery trucks were moving down river roads, and stores were extending their hours. The bus company was warning riders to anticipate “heavy traffic.” A community bank, soon to experience.... More

Former husband ruled a threat to family, but allowed to keep guns. Early last year, after a series of frightening encounters with her former husband, Stephanie Holten went to court in Spokane, Wash., to obtain a temporary order for protection. More

N.F.L. is pressured on issue of gay rights. PHOENIX — The N.F.L.’s investigation into why a team employee asked a college player if he liked girls during last month’s scouting combine has found that the comment was part of casual banter — “chatter that was inappropriate” —.... More

Gender bias seen in visas for skilled workers. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to hear testimony Monday afternoon arguing that the H-1B visa program, which covers highly skilled temporary foreign workers, often in high-tech fields, discriminates against women. More

Dispute on transgender rights unfolds at Colorado school. FOUNTAIN, Colo. — Coy Mathis was born a boy. But after just a few years, biology succumbed to a more powerful force. A buzz cut grew into long hair. Jeans gave way to pink dresses. And the child’s big cheeks trembled with tears when anyone.... More

U of Minnesota researchers find no link between low birth weight, working.... Women who work during pregnancy are no more likely to have premature or low birth-weight babies than those who don’t, according to University of Minnesota researchers who studied more than 1,500 women who gave birth in 2005. More

NFL medical standards, practices are different than almost anywhere else. When Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III gimped onto FedEx Field in the fourth quarter of a January playoff game against the Seattle Seahawks, he was under the gaze of no fewer than six physicians and assorted medical.... More

Learning the hard way about a banned ingredient. THE stimulant DMAA has been banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and Major League Baseball. But it is still found in Jack3d and other supplements sold at stores like GNC and the Vitamin Shoppe. More

Who made that cellphone? “We wanted to do a dazzling demonstration,” Martin Cooper says of the day in 1973 when he stood outside the Manhattan Hilton and fiddled with an object that was nearly the size of a child’s boot. “I had this thing with push-buttons on.... More

Better colleges failing to lure talented poor. Most low-income students who have top test scores and grades do not even apply to the nation’s best colleges, according to a new analysis of every high school student who took the SAT in a recent year. More

Study: delaying marriage hurts middle-class Americans the most. The tendency of young adults to put off marriage has taken a harsh toll on Americans without college degrees, according to a new study by a group of family researchers. More

GOP's Portman at odds with his party. In 1996, he voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriage. In 1999, he voted to prohibit gay couples in the District from adopting. Two years ago, his son told him he was gay. And this week,.... More

Looking for a lesson in Google's perks. After Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, ordered employees working from home to show up at the office for work, there was speculation that she was emulating Google, her previous employer. Yahoo employees should be so lucky. More

Bill in North Dakota bans abortion after heartbeat. Little more than a week after Arkansas adopted the country’s most stringent abortion limits, banning the procedure at 12 weeks of pregnancy, the North Dakota Legislature on Friday passed a more restrictive bill that would ban most abortions.... More

Right to a lawyer often eludes the poor. ADEL, Ga. — Billy Jerome Presley spent 17 months in a Georgia jail because he did not have $2,700 for a child support payment. He had no prior jail record but also no lawyer. In Baltimore last fall, Carl Hymes, 21, was arrested on charges of.... More

Are successful women really less likable than successful men? Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In is full of quotable lines: "What would you do if you weren't afraid?"; "As women must be more empowered at work, men must be more empowered at home"; and so on. There's one line in particular that jumped out at me. More

Don't lean in: Do we want mothers to work full-time? A new survey from Pew Research shows mothers and fathers converging in the ways they spend their time, in the ways they want to spend their time — and in what we say we want out of a balanced life. More

Boston schools drop last remnant of forced busing. The Boston School Committee, once synonymous with fierce resistance to racial integration, took a historic step Wednesday night and threw off the last remnants of a busing system first imposed in 1974 under a federal court desegregation order. More

Breastfeeding may not lead to leaner children. Breast-feeding is widely encouraged for its many positive health effects, but the claim that it reduces the risk for childhood obesity may be going too far. A randomized trial has found that even long-term exclusive breast feeding has no effect.... More

Younger generations lag in wealth-building. Pearl Brady has a stable job with good benefits and holds two degrees, a bachelor’s and a master’s. But despite her best efforts, she has no savings, and worries that it will be years before she manages to start putting away money for a.... More

Congress looks at fixing "temporary" immigration limbo. As Congress delves deeper into the immigration debate, members of both parties agree that an unloved system which gives temporary residence to nearly 300,000 foreigners in the United States is broken. More

In California, prologue to gay marriage ruling. Looking for clues about the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court vote on gay marriage? Check out California's past. Five years ago, the California high court was divided along similar lines as the U.S. court is today: a single justice was considered the.... More

More fathers than mothers say not enough time with kids. They worry they don’t spend enough time with their kids. They’re exhausted by just how much they have to cram into their days, juggling work with loading the dishwasher, driving to taekwondo practice, supervising homework and planning the.... More

Wrongfully convicted and seeking restitution. Robert Dewey spent almost 18 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Now he spends his time waiting. Waiting for food stamps, or his monthly $698 disability check. Swallowing painkillers and waiting for his wrenched back to stop aching.... More

Portland adds sick days for its workers. The Portland City Council, on March 13, 2013, approved a bill establishing a minimum number of sick days for workers throughout the city.   Portland now joins other jurisdictions around the nation -- San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C..... More

Costco's Profit Soars To $537 Million Just Days After CEO Endorses Minimum.... Less than a week after Costco CEO Craig Jelinek spoke out in favor of raising the minimum wage, the big-box retailer’s earnings showed that paying workers a living wage doesn’t always hurt business. More

Telework is still a federal priority. Telework Week landed in Washington just in time for the “snowquester” and a second storm that may be even harder to predict — the one potentially brewing after two major companies announced they are ending telework. More

California bill seeks campus credit for online study. Legislation will be introduced in the California Senate on Wednesday that could reshape higher education by requiring the state’s public colleges and universities to give credit for faculty-approved online courses taken by students unable to.... More

What do you want to be, now that you're grown? FOR most of my working life, I have never had to commute or see the inside of a cubicle. As a television critic, I was “forced” to watch the tube, and as a sportswriter, I inhabited stadiums and press boxes rather than dingy offices. More

Boy Scouts sends questionnaire to members about ban on gays. The Boy Scouts of America is reaching out to parents and scouts as it decides whether to continue or rescind the group’s ban on gay members and leaders. Surveys went out in recent days to 1.1 million scouts and their families around the.... More

Fed shifts focus to jobs. The Federal Reserve has set its sights on unemployment as the key to the recovery. The focus on jobs represents an historic shift for the central bank as it grapples with nearly four years of middling economic growth. More

Smart, poor kids are applying to the wrong colleges. Over and above all the other disadvantages one faces growing up poor in America, the majority of high-achieving kids from low-income backgrounds fail to apply to any selective colleges. More

Widespread flaws found in ovarian cancer treatment. Most women with ovarian cancer receive inadequate care and miss out on treatments that could add a year or more to their lives, a newstudy has found. More

U.S. demands China block cyberattacks and agree to rules. The White House demanded Monday that the Chinese government stop the widespread theft of data from American computer networks and agree to “acceptable norms of behavior in cyberspace.” More

Judge blocks New York City's limits on big sugary drinks. A judge struck down New York’s limits on large sugary drinks on Monday, one day before they were to take effect, in a significant blow to one of the most ambitious and divisive initiatives of MayorMichael R. Bloomberg’s tenure. More

Research ties economic inequality to gap in life expectancy. ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — This prosperous community is the picture of the good and ever longer life — just what policymakers have in mind when they say that raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare is a fair way to rein.... More

Mayo Clinic tests do-it-yourself prenatal care. On the morning of her doctor appointment, Andrea Pedersen had stopped at the gym to check her weight and blood pressure. She noted her measurements on her iPhone, and at the appointed time, she headed to a computer for a video chat with her.... More

Spike in whooping cough points to weakening shot. An increase in cases among Minnesota grade-schoolers has become national evidence that the pertussis vaccine loses effectiveness before children receive booster doses at ages 11 or 12. More

Online learning companies carve out creative niche. Anyone who wants to learn calculus, statistics or ancient Greek history can take free online courses, but if you’d like to watch a recording of a three-day course on the minutiae of photographing clients who commission high-end portraits of.... More

Harvard search of e-mail stuns faculty members. Bewildered, and at times angry, faculty members at Harvard criticized the university on Sunday after revelations that administrators secretly searched the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans in an effort to learn who leaked information about a.... More

Hospitals question standards in pilot program. A critical letter sent to federal health officials by 33 hospitals— including three in the Twin Cities — has created a buzz among some who see it as evidence that a key element of the health care law is showing cracks. More

Telework is still a federal priority. Telework Week landed in Washington just in time for the “snowquester” and a second storm that may be even harder to predict — the one potentially brewing after two major companies announced they are ending telework. More

South Dakota backs guns in class for teachers. South Dakota became the first state in the nation to enact a law explicitly authorizing school employees to carry guns on the job, under a measure signed into law on Friday by Gov. Dennis Daugaard. More

For parents-to-be, a few financial and legal tips. Once you hold your new baby in your arms for the first time, the last thing on your mind is all of the money-related tasks and decisions you have to make. More

Gun owners aren't necessarily gun likers. The national debate over firearms regulation is often presented as a battle of extremes: those who view any effort to tighten gun laws as an infringement of rights versus those who see guns as a menace to society. More

Recent heat spike unlike anything seen in 11,000 years. WASHINGTON - A new study looking at 11,000 years of climate temperatures shows the world in the middle of a dramatic U-turn, lurching from near-record cooling to a heat spike. More

To place graduates, law schools are opening firms. TEMPE, Ariz. — When Douglas J. Sylvester, dean of the law school at Arizona State University, was visiting the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota a couple of years ago he mentioned the shifting job market for his students — far fewer offers and a new.... More

It's about the work, not the office. THE recent decision by Marissa Mayer, the chief executive of Yahoo, to eliminate telecommuting for all workers brings her company back in line with most of corporate America, where working from home is more illusion than reality. More

Unemployment at 4-year low as U.S. hiring gains steam. Bolstered by a healthier private sector, the United States economy gained 236,000 jobs in February, well above what had been expected, while the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, its lowest level since December 2008. More

Minnesota becomes national hotspot for working at home. The news of high-profile companies stepping back from telecommuting arrives just as Minnesota is emerging as a national work-at-home hot spot. More

Unemployment applications fall to 5-year low. WASHINGTON — The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid fell to a seasonally adjusted 340,000 last week, driving down the four-week average to its lowest level in five years. The drop is a positive sign ahead of Friday’s report on.... More

With positions to fill, employers wait for perfection. American employers have a variety of job vacancies, piles of cash and countless well-qualified candidates. But despite a slowly improving economy, many companies remain reluctant to actually hire, stringing job applicants along for weeks or.... More

Study finds unreported side effects of drugs. Using data drawn from queries entered into Google, Microsoft and Yahoo search engines, scientists at Microsoft, Stanford and Columbia University have for the first time been able to detect evidence of unreported prescription drug side effects.... More

The allergy buster: can a radical new treatment save children with severe.... For nine years, the greatest challenge Kim Yates Grosso faced each day was keeping her daughter Tessa safe. Tessa was so severely allergic to milk, wheat, eggs, nuts, shellfish and assorted other foods that as a toddler she went into.... More

Private survey shows steady job gains in February. WASHINGTON (AP) — A private survey shows U.S. businesses added a solid number of jobs in February, indicating higher taxes and looming government spending cuts have yet to slow hiring. More

CDC says "nightmare bacteria" a growing threat. Federal officials warned Tuesday that “nightmare bacteria” — including the deadly superbug that struck a National Institutes of Health facility two years ago — are increasingly resistant to even the strongest antibiotics, posing a.... More

Financing for colleges declines as costs rise. State and local financing for higher education declined 7 percent in fiscal 2012, to $81.2 billion, according to the annual report of the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, and per-student support dropped 9 percent from the previous year, to $5,896, in constant dollars, the lowest.... More

U.S. Catholics in poll see a church out of touch. Roman Catholics in the United States say that their church and bishops are out of touch, and that the next pope should lead the church in a more modern direction on issues like birth control and ordaining women and married men as priests,.... More

U.S. relaxes air travel carry-on prohibitions. The Transportation Security Administration said on Tuesday that it would allow airplane passengers to bring pocketknives, golf clubs and other sports items aboard in carry-on bags, loosening some of the restrictions created after the Sept. 11.... More

Baby's cure may some day mean AIDS-free generation. AIDS researchers, advocacy organizations and global health officials spent Monday trying to determine whether the report that a baby girl born in Mississippi was cured of the infection is a therapeutic breakthrough or a scientific curiosity. More

Republicans fear fallout from cuts to health programs. Anxiety is rising among House Republicans about a strategy of appeasement toward fiscal hard-liners that could require them to embrace not only the sequester but also sharp new cuts to federal health and retirement programs. More

Racist incidents stun campus and halt classes at Oberlin. OBERLIN, Ohio — Oberlin College, known as much for ardent liberalism as for academic excellence, canceled classes on Monday and convened a “day of solidarity” after the latest in a month-long string of what it called hate-related.... More

Survey says big UK companies slow to promote women. LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's largest listed companies are failing to increase the number of women on their boards despite a Europe-wide push to get more women to top management positions, figures published on Tuesday showed. More

Fewer heart blockages showing up on stress tests. The proportion of patients who have blocked arteries show up during a stress test has dropped "enormously" over the past two decades, according to a new study. More

Many immigrants in U.S. stop midway on path to citizenship. For 13 years, Rafael Cohen, an immigrant from Mexico, was eligible to become a citizen of the United States. But something held him back. “I guess I felt I was maintaining more of a connection to my Mexican citizenship by remaining a green.... More

Obama's diverse picks remold federal court. In Florida, President Obama has nominated the first openly gay black man to sit on a federal district court. In New York, he has nominated the first Asian American lesbian. And his pick for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit? The.... More

Where apps meet work, secret data is at risk. As is the case with many busy people, Delyn Simons’s life has become an open phone app of commingled corporate and personal information. More

Cuts may hit poor harder than most. The $85 billion in automatic cuts working their way through the federal budget spare many programs that aid the poorest and most vulnerable Americans, including the Children’s Health Insurance Program and food stamps. More

Recovery in U.S. is lifting profits but not adding jobs. With the Dow Jones industrial average flirting with a record high, the split between American workers and the companies that employ them is widening and could worsen in the next few months as federal budget cuts take hold. More

Personalized guns touted as safety check. In the latest James Bond movie, the hero is given a gun that recognizes the palm of his hand. Later, when a bad guy snatches the pistol away in a tussle, it won't fire, and Agent 007 lives to die another day. More

How climate change hurts people of color. Chances are, if you are a person of color, climate change isn't at the top of your list of concerns. President Barack Obama's remarks on the issue in his State of the Union address and inaugural speech weren't what made you cheer. Finding a.... More

Can nerve endings in the tongue help treat traumatic brain injury? The human tongue is an extraordinary bit of flesh. It’s alternately squishy and tense, at times delicate and others powerful. It helps us taste, talk, and tie cherry stems, all the while avoiding two interlocking rows of sharpened enamel that.... More

Five myths about the sequester. Our political system was not designed to be efficient, but it wasn’t supposed to be self-destructive, either. After a near-default on the public debt and a “fiscal cliff” that threatened a new recession, we are facing another man-made.... More

Experts want more studies of diet's role for the heart. This is a watershed moment in the field of nutrition, medical experts say. For the first time, researchers have shown that a diet can have an effect as powerful as drugs in preventing what really matters to patients — heart attacks, and.... More

Public opinion could sway Supreme Court on gay marriage. The shift in favor of gay rights may have an effect on the justices. If not, it could still doom restrictive marriage laws in liberal states like California. More

Outside the box, federal judges offer addicts a free path. Federal judges around the country are teaming up with prosecutors to create special treatment programs for drug-addicted defendants who would otherwise face significant prison time, an effort intended to sidestep drug laws widely seen as.... More

Soccer must do more to fight racism, says task force boss. EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Soccer has failed to respond to victims of racism on or off the pitch for far too long and needs to change its attitudes now, Jeffrey Webb, the chairman of FIFA's new Anti-Racism and Discrimination Task Force said on.... More

The holocaust just got more shocking. THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe. What they.... More

A divide on voting rights in a town where blood spilled. McCOMB, Miss. — In the refined air of the United States Supreme Court, the questions posed by justices on Wednesday seemed so big as to be unanswerable: Are parts of the Voting Rights Act an unfair infringement on state sovereignty? How.... More

Student loan delinquency rate hits 35%. Number of the day: 35 percent.That's the portion of student-loan borrowers under the age of 30 who didn't have a deferral and were at least 90 days late on their payments at the end of 2012, according to the New York Federal Reserve Bank. More

Sequester arrives as Congress heads home. One day before automatic spending cuts were due to hit the Pentagon and other federal agencies, Congress on Thursday abandoned efforts to avert the reductions and left town for the weekend. The sequester is here, and policymakers have no plans.... More

House renews Violence Against Women measure. WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday gave final approval to a renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, sending a bipartisan Senate measure to President Obama after a House plan endorsed by conservatives was defeated. More

Euro zone jobless rate rises to new record. PARIS — The unemployment rate in the euro zone edged up in January to a new record, official data showed Friday, as the ailing European economy continued to weigh on the job market. More

U.S. asks justices to reject California's gay marriage ban. The Obama administration threw its support behind a broad claim for marriage equality on Thursday, and urged the Supreme Court to rule that voters in California were not entitled to ban same-sex marriage there. More

In gay marriage case, a corporate call for change. Arguing that the federal Defense of Marriage Act imposes serious administrative and financial costs on their operations, some of the nation’s largest companies filed a supporting brief with the Supreme Court on Wednesday, urging it to.... More

House to vote on Violence Against Women Act. House Republican leaders failed to rally support for their version of the Violence Against Women Act, so they decided to bring two versions of the legislation to a vote Thursday: the House bill and a Senate-passed measure favored by President.... More

Sequester spin gets ahead of reality. The descriptions of the post-sequester landscape coming from the Obama administration have been alarming, specific — and, in at least some cases, hyped. Take the claim by Education Secretary Arne Duncan that there are “literally teachers.... More

New attention to first lady as she presses ahead with healthy eating drive. To her admirers, Michelle Obama is the patron saint of quinoa, charged with reducing the nation’s dangerous obesity rate and helping children eat better. To her detractors, she is the fun-killer, possessed with crushing America’s cookies. More

Incarceration rates for blacks have fallen sharply, report shows. Incarceration rates for black Americans dropped sharply from 2000 to 2009, especially for women, while the rate of imprisonment for whites and Hispanics rose over the same decade, according to a report released Wednesday by a prison research.... More

Trauma sets female veterans adrift back home. LOS ANGELES — In the caverns of her memory, Tiffany Jackson recalls the job she held, fleetingly, after leaving the military, when she still wore stylish flats and blouses with butterfly collars and worked in a high-rise with a million-dollar.... More

Shopping for healthful food on a limited budget. NEW YORK — Three adults squatted in the cereal aisle of the Key Foods grocery store in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Each had plucked a different kind of oatmeal from one of the lower shelves. They were trying to determine.... More

Study ties black and white wealth gap to stubborn disparities in real.... The large and growing wealth gap separating white and black families is the product of stubborn barriers that disproportionately consign African Americans to less-valuable real estate and lower-paying jobs, according to a new study. More

Only half of first time college students graduate in six years. As we’ve covered here many times before, there is an abundance of evidence showing that going to college is worth it. But that’s really only true if you go to college and then graduate, and the United States is doing a terrible job of.... More

Study sees more breast cancer at young age. The incidence of advanced breast cancer among younger women, ages 25 to 39, may have increased slightly over the last three decades, according to a study released Tuesday. More

Gay couples face a mixed geography of marriage. MOSCOW, Idaho — The border with Washington State is just two miles from the home that Henry D. Johnston and his partner, Alex Irwin, own here in western Idaho, but for a gay couple it might as well be a thousand. More

Black students' learning gaps start early, report says. African American public school students in Los Angeles County demonstrate significant learning gaps by second grade; those gaps widen with age and lead to the highest school dropout rate among all races, according to a report released Monday. More

Gun show loophole proves hard to close. WASHINGTON — In May 1999, one month after the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, Senate Democrats triumphantly declared that the politics of gun control had changed. More

Yahoo orders teleworkers back to the office. Yahoo has made a surprise move: abolishing its work-at-home policy and ordering everyone to work in the office, saying face-to-face interaction among employees fosters a more collaborative culture. More

Low pay at Weight Watchers stirs protest. Tammy Williams became a Weight Watchers leader in Texas five years ago after losing 97 pounds in the program. The supplies that she handles fill a bedroom in her home, and she holds four meetings a week advising more than a hundred customers.... More

Prominent Republicans sign brief supporting gay marriage. Dozens of prominent Republicans — including top advisers to former President George W. Bush, four former governors and two members of Congress — have signed a legal brief arguing that gay people have a constitutional right to marry, a.... More

Long-term care rate hike stuns retirees. When Marie Benedettoopened her mail last week and learned her long-term care premium was going up a stunning 85 percent, she did what a retired math teacher would do. She made a spreadsheet. More

Find your state: Sequester's impact. The White House has released state-by-state reports on some of the programs and services that would be impacted under the sequestration cuts that are scheduled to go into effect on March 1. Here is their breakdown by state and program: More

'Bloodless' lung transplants offer hint at surgery's future. HOUSTON — Last April, after being told that only a transplant could save her from a fatal lung condition, Rebecca S. Tomczak began calling some of the top-ranked hospitals in the country. More

Mediterranean diet can cut heart disease, study finds. About 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease can be prevented in people at high risk if they switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even drink wine with meals,.... More

Sequester's big gamble: how bad will the pain be? With the ax set to fall on federal spending in five days, the question in Washington is not whether the sequester will hit, but how much it will hurt. More

Are our colleges equipping women to be leaders? As we near the March release of Sheryl Sandberg’s book about women and the workplace, I’ve been thinking back to the Facebook chief operating officer’s 2011 commencement address at Barnard College. It was the speech that really debuted.... More

High debt, falling demand trap new veterinarians. HAYLEY SCHAFER chose her dream job at the age of 5. Three years later, her grandmother told her that if she wrote it down, the dream would come true. So she found a piece of blue construction paper and scrawled on it with a pencil:.... More

Congress will consider tighter gun laws this week. After weeks of sometimes wrenching debate over gun safety, Congress will begin to consider legislation this week that is likely to include expanded background checks for gun buyers and increased penalties for those who purchase guns for.... More

Major banks aid in payday loans banned by states. Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based payday lenders that offer short-term loans with interest rates sometimes exceeding 500 percent. More

In paid family leave, U.S. trails most of the globe. There I was, on the day my six months of maternity leave had ended, pushing my son’s stroller with one hand, clutching a jumbo box of 174 diapers with the other, doing my best to navigate through piles of slushy snow. More

Immigrants, advocates, impatient with Obama. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano had just begun her remarks to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on immigration when the first protester leapt to his feet. More

As furloughs loom, unions try to soften sequester blow for federal workers. Federal government labor unions and agency managers are bargaining over how and when to carry out first-of-their-kind furloughs of more than a million employees as deep spending cuts are all but certain to kick in Friday. More

U.S. inquiries over automobile safety dragging on. Last year, owners of about 16.2 million cars and trucks received letters saying their vehicles had safety problems and were being recalled. But millions more were left in recall limbo. More

Weighing prospect of changes in graduation requirements. Following backlash over the rocky institution of a new student assessment system last spring, Texas lawmakers are scrambling to scale back the requirements they passed four years ago. More

What price fitness? You get to make the call. In the first six minutes of boot camp on a recent Tuesday night, the trainer Adam Rosante has a class of 27 audibly gasping for breath, already having exercised every muscle. More

Labor, business leaders declare progress on immigration talks. Labor and business leaders announced Thursday they have agreed in principle to terms that would establish a new guest worker program for foreigners, but they cautioned that details of the program are still being negotiated. More

Flu vaccine doing poor job of protecting seniors; health officials baffled. It turns out this year’s flu shot is doing a startlingly dismal job of protecting older people, the most vulnerable age group. The vaccine is proving only 9 percent effective in those 65 and older against the harsh strain of the flu that is.... More

When mutant mosquitoes attack. It’s no wonder that Goethe wrote “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” near the dawn of the industrial age. The poem, which most of us now learn from Mickey Mouse, tells the story of a young man who, left to his own devices, mimics his boss’s.... More

For traumatized caregivers, therapy helps. I recently wrote about caregivers who experienced symptoms of traumatic-like stress, and readers responded with heart-rending stories. Many described being haunted by distress long after a relative died. More

A titan's 'how-to' on breaking the glass ceiling. Before Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, started to write “Lean In,” her book-slash-manifesto on women in the workplace, she reread Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique.” Like the homemaker turned activist.... More

New federal rule requires insurers to offer mental health coverage. The Obama administration issued a final rule on Wednesday defining “essential health benefits” that must be offered by most health insurance plans next year, and it said that 32 million people would gain access to coverage of mental health.... More

Coalition releases list of 90 'dont's' in order to improve care. Don’t use feeding tubes in patients with advanced dementia. Don’t use drugs to aggressively treat diabetes in those older than 65. Don’t automati­cally use imaging technology for minor head injuries in children and headaches in adults..... More

Study finds effects of bullying last well into adulthood. Victims of bullying at school, and bullies themselves, are more likely to experience psychiatric problems in childhood, studies have shown. Now researchers have found that elevated risk of psychiatric trouble extends into adulthood, sometimes.... More

Florida, in reversal, decides to take Obama's health care. Gov. Rick Scott of Florida reversed himself on Wednesday and announced that he would expand his state’s Medicaid program to cover the poor, becoming the latest — and, perhaps, most prominent — Republican critic of President Obama’s.... More

Children in U.S. eating fewer calories, study finds. American children consumed fewer calories in 2010 than they did a decade before, a new federal analysis shows. Health experts said the findings offered an encouraging sign that the epidemic of obesity might be easing, but cautioned that the.... More

Parties begin blame game as sequester nears. The fight between President Obama and congressional Republicans over the automatic spending cuts that start next week is shifting from one about stopping them to one about assigning blame if they happen. More

It takes a B.A. to find a job as a file clerk. ATLANTA —The college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the new minimum requirement, albeit an expensive one, for getting even the lowest-level job. More

DNA test for rare disorders becomes more routine. Debra Sukin and her husband were determined to take no chances with her second pregnancy. Their first child, Jacob, who had a serious genetic disorder, did not babble when he was a year old and had severe developmental delays. So the second.... More

The extraordinary science of addictive junk food. On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America’s largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and.... More

A digital shift on health data swells profits in an industry. It was a tantalizing pitch: come get a piece of a $19 billion government “giveaway.” The approach came in 2009, in a presentation to doctors by Allscripts Healthcare Solutions of Chicago, a well-connected player in the lucrative business.... More

What do adults owe abusive parents? What do we owe our tormentors? It’s a question that haunts those who had childhoods marked by years of neglect and deprivation, or of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of one or both parents. More

Schools ask: gifted or just well-prepared? When the New York City Education Department announced that it was changing part of its admissions exam for its gifted and talented programs last year, in part to combat the influence of test preparation companies, one of those companies posted.... More

DNA test for rare disorders becomes more routine. Debra Sukin and her husband were determined to take no chances with her second pregnancy. Their first child, Jacob, who had a serious genetic disorder, did not babble when he was a year old and had severe developmental delays. More

Prison and the poverty trap. Why are so many American families trapped in poverty? Of all the explanations offered by Washington’s politicians and economists, one seems particularly obvious in the low-income neighborhoods near the Capitol: because there are so many.... More

Gym class isn't just fun and games any more. WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — On a recent afternoon, the third graders in Sharon Patelsky’s class reviewed words like “acronym,” “clockwise” and “descending,” as well as math concepts like greater than, less than and place values. More

Certain TV fare can help ease aggression in young children, study finds. In a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, researchers reported the results of a program designed to limit the exposure of preschool children to violence-laden videos and television shows and increase their time with educational.... More

Some employers could opt out of health insurance, raising costs for others. Federal and state officials and consumer advocates have grown worried that companies with relatively young, healthy employees may opt out of the regular health insurance market to avoid the minimum coverage standards in President Obama’s.... More

With no shortcut to a green card, gay couples leave the U.S. Not long ago, Brandon Perlberg had a growing law practice and a Manhattan apartment he shared with his partner, who is British. They hosted themed dinner parties and wine tastings for a wide circle of friends. More

When being jobless is a barrier to finding a job. The sign outside the diner said help wanted. But when Albert Mango said he was out of work, he was told there was no opening there. Kevin Johnson tells people he works off the books rather than admit to being unemployed, because he fears being.... More

Obama seeking to boost study of human brain. The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics. More

Housing recovery spills into manufacturing. The long-awaited comeback in the housing market is finally making its way to Minnesota’s battered manufacturing sector, with companies ranging from Marvin Windows and Doors to Honeywell International seeing notable jumps in sales. More

White House immigration bill would lay out 8-year path to legal status. The White House is circulating a draft immigration bill that would create a new visa for illegal immigrants living in the United States and allow them to become legal permanent residents within eight years, according to a report published.... More

Colleges become major front in fight over carrying guns. BOULDER, Colo. — Public colleges and universities have become a major front in the nation’s debate over guns as gun-rights advocates press to expand the right to carry concealed weapons, a campaign that gained steam after the 2007 shooting.... More

In China, betting it all on a child in college. HANJING, China — Wu Yiebing has been going down coal shafts practically every workday of his life, wrestling an electric drill for $500 a month in the choking dust of claustrophobic tunnels, with one goal in mind: paying for his daughter’s.... More

Cuomo bucks tide with bill to ease limits on abortion. Bucking a trend in which states have been seeking to restrict abortion, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is putting the finishing touches on legislation that would guarantee women in New York the right to late-term abortions when their health is in danger.... More

With minimum wage hike, U.S. workers will still lag behind many countries. The lowest-paid U.S. workers would continue to lag behind their counterparts in many industrial countries if President Barack Obama’s proposal to boost the minimum wage to $9 an hour is passed. More

Initial jobless claims down sharply. The U.S. Labor Department said first-time jobless benefits claims fell by 27,000 to 341,000 in the week that ended Saturday. Initial claims for unemployment benefits dropped from 368,000, a figure revised from the 371,000 announced last Thursday. More

Protest artist's cardboard cutouts draw attention to the immigration issue. As senators opened the immigration reform debate with a hearing Wednesday morning, spectral sentinels last seen in the Hollywood Hills and on Rodeo Drive began appearing on Capitol Hill. More

Conservatives skeptical of expanding preschool. ATLANTA — President Obama’s plan to expand preschool for the nation’s children faces deep skepticism among Republicans, who fear the creation of another federal entitlement program that they say could add to the nation’s deficit and.... More

A device offers partial vision for the blind. The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the first treatment to give limited vision to people who are blind, involving a technology called the artificial retina. More

A tiny village where women choose to be single mothers. LOI, Vietnam — They had no plan to break barriers or cause trouble. But 30 years ago in this bucolic village in northern Vietnam, the fierce determination of one group of women to become mothers upended centuries-old gender rules and may have.... More

Kiss Cam and unscripted closeups usually make for perfect match. As the Maryland and Virginia basketball teams gathered by their benches late in the first half Sunday, a few middle-aged men in Room 0427 — the “Video Scoreboard Control Room” — tried to inject some mid-afternoon romance into a.... More

Use of morning-after pill is rising, report says. The use of morning-after pills by American women has more than doubled in recent years, driven largely by rising rates of use among women in their early 20s, according to new federal data released Thursday. More

In high-tech Japan, the fax machines roll on. TOKYO — Japan is renowned for its robots and bullet trains, and has some of the world’s fastest broadband networks. But it also remains firmly wedded to a pre-Internet technology — the fax machine — that in most other developed nations.... More

Details emerge on Obama's call to extend preschool. President Obama’s call in his State of the Union address to “make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America” rallied advocates across the country who have long argued that inequity in education begins at a very.... More

To reduce suicide rates, new focus turns to guns. Craig Reichert found his son’s body on a winter morning, lying on the floor as if he were napping with his great-uncle’s pistol under his knee. The 911 dispatcher told him to administer CPR, but Mr. Reichert, who has had emergency training,.... More

The daddy dilemma: why men face a 'flexibility stigma' at work. When children were asked in a 1999 study whether they spend enough time with their parents, they had something interesting to say. They have quite enough time with their mothers, thank you. What they wanted was more time with their fathers. Not.... More

Senate reauthorizes Violence Against Women act. The Senate has agreed to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, showing bipartisan support for a measure that would revamp domestic violence programs and extend the law’s protections to gays and lesbians and women on tribal reservations. More

College health plans respond as transgender students gain visibility. Over the last decade, as activists started pushing colleges to accommodate transgender students, they first raised only basic issues, like recognizing a name change or deciding who could use which bathrooms. More

Raising minimum wage would ease income gap but carries risks. President Obama called on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour from $7.25 and to automatically adjust it with inflation, a move aimed at increasing the earnings of millions of cooks, janitors, aides to the elderly and other.... More

Obama pledges to lift economy for middle class. President Obama, seeking to put the prosperity and promise of the middle class at the heart of his second-term agenda, called on Congress on Tuesday night to raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour, saying that would lift millions out of.... More

Falling through the cracks of the Family Leave Act. Danelle Buchman and her husband, Tony, try to get their daughters, Eliza, left, and Avery, to eat at dinnertime at their home in Clarksville. Eight weeks before Avery was due, an artery ruptured in Buchman’s uterus, which nearly killed her.... More

Same-sex military couples to get new benefits. The Pentagon announced Monday that it would extend additional benefits to same-sex military couples, including access to base facilities and groups as well as joint assignments, the latest move by the Obama administration to heed calls from gays and lesbians pressing for change. More

Heading for retirement on autopilot. JANE DOE never noticed as hundreds of dollars disappeared from her paychecks since she was hired two years ago. Her company started by taking 3 percent out of every check to put into her 401(k) retirement plan. More

Picking the source of baby's milk. When Bevil Conway and his partner brought their premature twins home from the hospital, the two fathers felt it was important to keep them on a diet of breast milk. So the new parents purchased a couple of coolers and an extra freezer, and.... More

Slower growth of health costs eases U.S. deficit. A sharp and surprisingly persistent slowdown in the growth of health care costs is helping to narrow the federal deficit, leaving budget experts trying to figure out whether the trend will last and how much the slower growth could help.... More

Apple developing wristwatch device that runs on iOS, say reports. The cycle of speculation that Apple plans to build some kind of wristwatch or other wearable computing device kicked into high gear this weekend after a pair of reports claimed to confirm that such a device was under development. More

Pope Benedict XVI to resign, citing age and waning energy. LONDON — Recognizing what he described as his failing strength of “mind and body,” Pope Benedict XVI on Monday announced that he would become the first pontiff to resign since 1415. More

Complex investments prove risky, as savers chase bigger payoff. Regulators across the country are confronting a wave of investor fraud that is saddling retirement savers with steep losses on complex products that until a few years ago were pitched only to the most sophisticated investors. More

Rising voice of gun ownership is female. PAINESVILLE, Ohio — Mary Ann Froebe stood feet apart with knees slightly bent and aimed the .22-caliber Ruger semiautomatic. “You’ve got some adrenaline running through you right now,” said Esther Beris, the coordinator of the.... More

Young, liberal and open to big government. MISSOULA, Mont. — This funky college town, nestled along two rivers where five mountain ranges converge, has long been a liberal pocket, an isolated speck of blue in a deeply red state. More

Want to know how smart your dog is? There's an app for that. Sixty dollars! It’s the only thing standing between me and a new Web app I sorely want:Dognition, which will confirm once and for all that my dog is a genius. (Admittedly, that genius is buried deep. Most people who know Ziggy don’t.... More

After the big snowstorm, the struggle to dig out. Residents and emergency workers in the Northeast struggled to dig out Sunday after a gigantic midwinter storm left much of the region buried under drifting snow and reeling from gale-force winds. More

Plugging in, Dutch put electric cars to the test. AMSTERDAM — When Patrick Langevoort’s company issued him anelectric vehicle two years ago, the first months were filled with misadventure: he found himself far from Amsterdam, with only a 25 percent charge remaining, unable to find the.... More

Battling college costs, a paycheck at a time. If Steve Boedefeld graduates from Appalachian State Universitywithout any student loan debt, it will be because of the money he earned fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and the money he now saves by eating what he grows or kills. More

Relax! You'll be more productive. THINK for a moment about your typical workday. Do you wake up tired? Check your e-mail before you get out of bed? Skip breakfast or grab something on the run that’s not particularly nutritious? Rarely get away from your desk for lunch? Run.... More

Behaviors that lead to marital bliss. What if it’s as bad as you think? What if behind the picket fence and brocade curtains, your neighbors really are holding hands by the fire? They’re calling each other “sweetheart” and talking about their feelings before heading to the.... More

Long-awaited stroke study has bad news. Three long-awaited studies have shown that mechanically removing a blood clot from a stroke patient’s brain is no more useful than the older treatment of giving an IV dose of a clot-dissolving drug to the whole body. More

For some landlords, real money in the homeless. Willy Machan acknowledges he is a gadfly, someone who writes bristling letters to local officials to get conditions improved in his grim single-room-occupancy building. But he was surprised by what his landlord offered last July to persuade him.... More

More than pushing cookies. TUCSON — When you buy a box of Girl Scout cookies and devour 10 in a single sitting, as untold numbers of people will in the next month, you are propping up a pretty sizable enterprise. More

Heavy snow and winds batter Northeast. A powerful nor’easter swept fast and furiously across the Northeast on Saturday, dumping mountains of snow, forcing hundreds of motorists to abandon their cars at the height of the blizzard and knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of.... More

GOP governors embrace key part of health care law. Several Republican governors have embraced a key pillar of President Obama’s health-care law: Extending Medicaid to 17 million Americans. More

In California, reading the snow to tell the future of the water supply. Along Highway 50 in the Sierra Nevada, elevation 6,820 feet, a California winter ritual unfolded here on a recent morning. More

Pew study tracks success of immigrants' children. Americans who were born to immigrant parents, many of them the adult children of an enormous wave of immigrants who began arriving in the 1960s, are doing better than the foreign born on important measures of socioeconomic success, and in at.... More

A long struggle for equality in schools. TUCSON — Looking back at the school desegregation case he took as a young lawyer, Rubin Salter Jr. sees a pile of wasted money and squandered opportunities. After almost four decades in court and nearly $1 billion in public spending, little.... More

Business and labor unite to try to alter immigration laws. After decades of friction over immigration, the nation’s labor unions and the leading business association, the Chamber of Commerce, have formed an unusual alliance that is pushing hard to revamp American immigration laws. More

Postal unions angry, customers unfazed about Saturday cut. The U.S. Postal Service's plan to end Saturday first-class delivery in August angered unions that stand to lose jobs and faces an uncertain fate in Congress. But the decision, which the Postal Service says will save $2 billion a year, barely.... More

Farmers are eager for immigration reform. At Chandler Farms, in the San Joaquin Valley just outside of Selma, Calif., about three dozen workers are needed each season to pick acres of delicate peaches, plums, nectarines and citrus. More

Lighter menus appeal to restaurants and diners. Driven by pressures like consumer demand and looming federal regulations that will require them to post calorie counts on menus, restaurant chains around the country are adding more nutritious choices and shrinking portion sizes. More

Smoking, once used to reward, faces ban in mental hospitals. MANDEVILLE, La. — Annelle S., 64, who has paranoid schizophrenia, took an urgent drag on a cigarette at a supervised outdoor smoke break at Southeast Louisiana Hospital. “It’s mandatory to smoke,” she explained. “It’s a mental.... More

Getting into your exercise groove. This isn’t meant as an insult, but you are physiologically lazy. So am I. So are we all. Using treadmill testing, scientists have definitively established that, like other animals, humans naturally aim to use as little energy as possible.... More

People with mental illness more likely to be smokers, study says. People with mental illness are 70 percent more likely to smoke cigarettes than people without mental illness, two federal health agencies reported Tuesday. More

Why can some kids handle pressure while others fall apart? Noah Muthler took his first state standardized test in third grade at the Spring Cove Elementary School in Roaring Spring, Pa. It was a miserable experience, said his mother, Kathleen Muthler. He was a good student in a program for gifted.... More

Postal service to end delivery of letters on Saturday. The Postal Service is expected to announce on Wednesday morning that it will stop delivering letters and other mail on Saturdays, but continue to handle packages, a move the financially struggling agency said would save about $2 billion.... More

Why are heart attacks more common in winter (even in California)? A recent study has found that more fatal heart attacks and strokes occur during the winter than at other times of the year. And it doesn’t seem to matter if the winter is occurring in the warmer climes of Southern California or the frostier.... More

"Simply Thick" warning too late for some babies. Six weeks after Jack Mahoney was born prematurely on Feb. 3, 2011, the neonatal staff at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, N.C., noticed that his heart rate slowed slightly when he ate. More

Veterans learn to write the words they could not speak. RON CAPPS sat alone in a truck in a Darfur desert preparing to shoot himself in the head. He had been in the military for 22 years, serving in the Army and working for the Foreign Service in the world’s hot spots, including Afghanistan, Iraq,.... More

Gluten-free, whether you need it or not. Eat no wheat. That is the core, draconian commandment of a gluten-free diet, a prohibition that excises wide swaths of American cuisine — cupcakes, pizza, bread and macaroni and cheese, to name a few things. More

Gun background checks drop by 10% in January. The number of federal background checks for firearm sales declined unexpectedly last month following a surge toward the end of the year as Washington considered new gun control measures. More

Study: new tuberculosis vaccine doesn't protect infants. LONDON - The world's most advanced tuberculosis vaccine failed to protect babies against the infectious disease, according to a new study in South Africa. More

IRS has improved hiring times, report says. The IRS took more than five months to hire some of its new employees from outside the federal government in 2009. The agency’s lengthy timelines led to difficulty attracting highly qualified candidates, who could often find work faster in the.... More

Tech, telecom giants take sides, as FCC proposes large, public WiFi.... The federal government wants to create super WiFi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month. More

Study discovers internal trigger for panic attack in the previously.... In the past few years, scientists have learned a lot about fear from a woman who could not experience it. A rare illness had damaged a part of her brain known as the amygdala and left her eerily unafraid. More

Once Blackberry focused, a campus widens its view. WATERLOO, Ontario — The University of Waterloo, in a city that people outside Canada would struggle to find on a map, is one of the world’s best technology schools. More

Scholars sketch bleak picture for African Americans. Scholars gathered for the African American Economic Summit at Howard University on Friday sketched an alarming picture of the financial ills afflicting the black community even as the nation recovers from the recession. More

In immigration debate, same-sex marriage comes to the fore. In his final legislative act as a senator, Secretary of State John F. Kerry sought to resolve an international dilemma. He filed Senate Bill 48, seeking “permanent resident status for Genesio Januario Oliveira,” a gay Brazilian national.... More

In travel, we're all boomers now. Big font. Easy-to-print pages. Luxury hotels that can be sorted by amenities like cooking lessons and connecting suites. If you find yourself enjoying the carefully planned features onPreferredfamily.com, you have the baby boomer generation to.... More

In hard economy for all ages, older isn't better – it's brutal. Young graduates are in debt, out of work and on their parents’ couches. People in their 30s and 40s can’t afford to buy homes or have children. Retirees are earning near-zero interest on their savings. More

Drowned in a stream of prescriptions. VIRGINIA BEACH — Every morning on her way to work, Kathy Fee holds her breath as she drives past the squat brick building that houses Dominion Psychiatric Associates. It was there that her son, Richard, visited a doctor and received.... More

U.S. job market looks surprisingly strong, raising hopes. The U.S. job market is proving surprisingly strong and raising hopes that the economy will be resilient enough this year to withstand a budget standoff in Washington and potentially deep cuts in federal spending. More

For first time home buyers, here's a primer. Want to buy your first home? You’ve probably got some cash saved for a down payment and maybe even recommendations for realty agents from savvy friends you trust. But have you cleared up your credit report, hired a tax adviser or considered.... More

France debates gay marriage. PARIS — The invitation-only soiree at the Rond-Point Theater on the Champs-Élysées last Sunday gathered 1,000 of this city’s glitterati, among them government ministers, intellectuals, politicians, artists and even union leaders, to.... More

Brothers develop new device to halt allergy attacks. Twin brothers Eric and Evan Edwards grew up with serious food allergies and were under doctor’s orders to carry their medicine everywhere they went. More

Birth control rule altered to allay religious objections. The Obama administration on Friday proposed yet another compromise to address strenuous objections from religious organizations about a policy requiring health insurance plans to provide free contraceptives, but the change did not end the political furor or legal fight over the issue. More

VA study finds more veterans committing suicide. Every day about 22 veterans in the United States kill themselves, a rate that is about 20 percent higher than the Department of Veterans Affairs’ 2007 estimate, according to a two-year study by a VA researcher. More

Citizenship question roils both parties as immigration debate gets.... Rising tensions over whether to give illegal immigrants a chance to pursue full citizenship could ruin what President Obama and congressional leaders agree is a pivotal moment in resolving long-simmering problems in the country’s immigration.... More

Mother loses fourth child to Chicago gun violence. Shirley Chambers of Chicago had four children - three boys and a girl. Now they're all gone. Chambers will bury her son, Ronnie Chambers, on Monday. He was the last of the single mother's children - all victims of gun violence in Chicago over a.... More

Focus on mental health laws to curb violence is unfair, some say. In their fervor to take action against gun violence after the shooting in Newtown, Conn., a growing number of state and national politicians are promoting a focus on mental illness as a way to help prevent further killings. More

U.S. adds 157,000 jobs; jobless rate edges up to 7.9% American employers added 157,000 jobs in January compared with a revised 196,000 jobs the previous month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. The unemployment rate was little changed, ticking up to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent in December. More

Segregated blacks more likely to die of lung cancer, says study. Researchers have found that Black patients living in segregated counties have a lung cancer mortality rate about 10 percentage points higher than those living in diverse neighborhoods. More

Blackberry's best trick: nailing work-life balance. Today BlackBerry demoed what it’s calling BlackBerry Balance, a clever way of separating one’s personal and work lives in one device. You don’t see it as much these days but carrying two phones — one for business, one for pleasure —.... More

Malnourished gain lifesaver in antibiotics. Two studies of malnourished children offer the first major new scientific findings in a decade about the causes and treatment of severe malnutrition, which affects more than 20 million children around the world and contributes to the deaths of.... More

Federal rule limits aid to families that can't afford health care coverage. The Obama administration adopted a strict definition of affordable health insurance on Wednesday that will deny federal financial assistance to millions of Americans with modest incomes who cannot afford family coverage offered by employers. More

On immigration, Obama assumes upper hand. As the specifics of immigration legislation take shape on Capitol Hill, President Obama is making it clear that he wants the overhaul on his terms. Officials in the West Wing are convinced that the politics of the immigration issue have firmly.... More

Money issues driving down law school applications. Law school applications are headed for a 30-year low, reflecting increased concern over soaring tuition, crushing student debt and diminishing prospects of lucrative employment upon graduation. More

Unemployed pay needless fees to collect benefits. Jobless Americans are paying millions in unnecessary fees to collect unemployment benefits because of state policies encouraging them to get the money through bank-issued payment cards, according to a new report from a consumer group. More

Sandwich generation takes a hit supporting adult children and aging.... More parents are providing significant financial support for their adult children even as they cope with the needs of their own aging parents, according to a new survey of the middle-aged “sandwich generation.” More

That cuddly kitty is deadlier than you think. For all the adorable images of cats that play the piano, flush the toilet, mew melodiously and find their way back home over hundreds of miles, scientists have identified a shocking new truth: cats are far deadlier than anyone realized. More

Wear a helmut when hitting the slopes. Recently, researchers from the department of sport science at the University of Innsbruck in Austria stood on the slopes at a local ski resort and trained a radar gun on a group of about 500 skiers and snowboarders, each of whom had completed.... More

Scouts plan to allow gays ignites debate on local level. A proposed shift by the Boy Scouts of America away from its national policy banning gays, leaving the decision to local councils, has divided scouts, families and troop leaders, with thousands taking to the organization’s Facebook page and.... More

For search, Facebook had to go beyond Robotspeak. The team included two linguists, a Ph.D. in psychology and statisticians, along with the usual cadre of programmers. Their mission was ambitious but clear: teach Facebook’s computers how to communicate better with people. More

The drug dose gender gap Most sleeping pills are designed to knock you out for eight hours. When the Food and Drug Administration was evaluating a new short-acting pill for people to take when they wake up in the middle of the night, agency scientists wanted to know.... More

In a quick shift, scouts rethink ban on gays. The Boy Scouts of America, with its traditions of youth in uniform and the character-building virtues of honor, has always looked back to an older, more structured image of America, when gay and lesbian people were invisible and silent. More

Youth trauma linked to later ills. Stress and trauma in childhood tend to lead to anxiety and poor health in adulthood, according to Minnesota's first-ever survey of adults about "adverse experiences" in their youth. More

Obama speech expected to embrace immigration plan. President Obama is expected to embrace an ambitious proposal by a bipartisan group of senators to overhaul the nation’simmigration laws, using a speech in Las Vegas Tuesday as a call to arms for one of his top legislative priorities. More

More using electronics to track their health. Whether they have chronic ailments like diabetes or just want to watch their weight, Americans are increasingly tracking their health using smartphone applications and other devices that collect personal data automatically, according to.... More

After Newtown, schools tighten security. In the anxious weeks after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the idea of bringing more police into the nation’s schools has picked up support. But for many parents and educators, there is a more immediate.... More

States offer insurance exchanges to meet health care rules. Under the federal Affordable Care Act, each state will have to offer an online marketplace where people can comparison shop for coverage the same way they might buy a plane ticket. But states have tremendous leeway in what these insurance.... More

Senators offer bipartisan blueprint for immigration. A bipartisan group of senators has agreed on a set of principles for a sweeping overhaul of the immigration system, including a pathway to American citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants that would hinge on progress in securing the.... More

An oil boom takes a toll on health care. WATFORD CITY, N.D. — The patients come with burns from hot water, with hands and fingers crushed by steel tongs, with injuries from chains that have whipsawed them off their feet. Ambulances carry mangled, bloodied bodies from accidents on.... More

In hiring, a friend in need is a prospect, indeed. Riju Parakh wasn’t even looking for a new job. But when a friend at Ernst & Young recommended her, Ms. Parakh’s résumé was quickly separated from the thousands the firm receives every week. More

Lacking time and money, workers skip vacation days. Tisa Silver-Canady realized toward the end of last year that she had not used about a third of her vacation time. Last year, the financial aid administrator at the University of Maryland-Baltimore took two brief trips -- one for work, the other.... More

In Japan, school lunches are a point of pride. In Japan, school lunch means a regular meal, not one that harms your health. The food is grown locally and almost never frozen. There’s no mystery in front of the meat. From time to time, parents even call up with an unusual question: Can.... More

Thousands join Washington march for gun control. Thousands of people, many holding signs with names of gun violence victims and messages such as "Ban Assault Weapons Now," joined a rally for gun control on Saturday, marching from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. More

A flood of suits fights coverage of birth control. In a flood of lawsuits, Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Mennonites are challenging a provision in the new health care lawthat requires employers to cover birth control in employee health plans — a high-stakes clash between religious.... More

How to say 'Look at me!' to an online recruiter. IF you are thinking of looking for a job this year, or are already searching for one, be warned: for some job seekers, the rules have changed. More

Selling a new generation on guns. Threatened by long-term declining participation in shooting sports, the firearms industry has poured millions of dollars into a broad campaign to ensure its future by getting guns into the hands of more, and younger, children. More

Clearer food labels might help with healthy food choice: study Different labels on food that clearly display the total number of calories and nutrients in the entire package, rather than just part of it, might help people make healthier food choices, according to a study from the U.S. Food and Drug.... More

U.S. panel advises tighter control on painkiller Vicodin. In a move to stem the epidemic of prescription drug deaths, an advisory panel to the FDA recommends that the agency reclassify hydrocodone, the active ingredient in Vicodin, as a Schedule II narcotic. More

Rising TV fees mean all viewers pay to keep sports fans happy. For a glimpse of how out of control sports bidding wars have become, look no further than your cable television bill. More

Disputing a charge on your credit card. If you have ever disputed a charge with your debit or credit card company, you know what a potent weapon this type of complaint can be. More

Proposed New Mexico law would send rape victims to prison for having.... It’s another one of those unbelievable moments in the so-called GOP “war on women.” A  rape victim could be charged with a felony and face up to three years in prison if she aborts a child conceived in that rape, according to a bill.... More

Obama's more combative approach on guns: have voters pressure lawmakers. The White House has decided to circumvent Capitol Hill as it concentrates its gun-control efforts on speeches and other public appearances by President Obama and Vice President Biden outside of Washington, according to officials with knowledge.... More

Mutations found in melanomas may shed light on how cancers grow. In a leap forward in understanding the basic science of one of the most lethal cancers, two groups of researchers have found mutations in most melanomas that are unlike any they have seen before in cancer. More

Chinese graduates say no thanks to factory jobs. GUANGZHOU, China — This city of 15 million on the Pearl River is the hub of a manufacturing region where factories make everything from T-shirts and shoes to auto parts, tablet computers and solar panels. More

When the bullets flew, 'they didn't care that I was a woman.' During her second deployment to Iraq, Staff Sgt. Stacy Pearsall of the Air Force found herself attached to an Army ground unit that was clearing roadside bombs. They had just found their 26th device of the day when one of their armored.... More

Weekly unemployment applications fall to five-year low. The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid fell last week to the lowest level in five years, evidence that employers are cutting fewer jobs and may step up hiring. More

California school district gets rifles. The high-powered semiautomatic rifles recently shipped to school police in this Southern California city look like they belong on a battlefield rather than in a high school, but officials here say the weapons could help stop a massacre like the.... More

To raise graduation rate, colleges are urged to help a changing student.... In an effort to improve the college completion rate and fend off new regulations, a commission of the nation’s six leading higher-education associations is calling for extensive reforms to serve a changing college population — one.... More

The last holdout in New England, Rhode Island weighs gay marriage. Rhode Island, the only state in New England that has not legalized gay marriage, began taking up the matter this week. The State House is expected to pass a bill Thursday that would allow anyone to marry “any eligible person regardless of.... More

Pentagon is set to lift combat ban for women. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is lifting the military’s official ban on women in combat, which will open up hundreds of thousands of additional front-line jobs to them, senior defense officials said Wednesday. More

House will vote today on three month debt extension. The House plans to vote Wednesday on a Republican proposal to extend the government's debt ceiling for three months, with conservatives waging a last-minute effort to defeat the bill because it would not force spending cuts. More

Education plan reopens divide on U.S. history. Far from the classroom, an intense but nearly invisible battle is being waged for the hearts and minds of Minnesota's schoolchildren. The fight is over how history and other social studies topics will be taught, long a flashpoint for political.... More

Many Medicaid patients could face higher fees. Millions of low-income people could be required to pay more for health care under a proposed federal policy that would give states more freedom to impose co-payments and other charges on Medicaid patients. More

Is there one right way to run? In recent years, many barefoot running enthusiasts have been saying that to reduce impact forces and injury risk, runners should land near the balls of their feet, not on their heels, a running style that has been thought to mimic that of our.... More

Maker aware of 40% failure in hip implant. An internal analysis conducted by Johnson & Johnson in 2011 not long after it recalled a troubled hip implant estimated that the all-metal device would fail within five years in nearly 40 percent of patients who received it, newly.... More

Inside the world's oddest jobs. Nancy Rica Schiff’s job as a photographer doesn’t exactly land her in the offbeat career category, but it has opened her eyes to less than traditional professions. More

High school graduation rate at four-decade high. The percentage of students at public high schools who graduate on time has reached its highest level in nearly 40 years, according to the most recent federal government estimates released Tuesday. More

Antibiotics used in soaps and cosmetics tainting Minnesota's lakes. An antibiotic widely used in soaps and cosmetics that mostly goes down the drain is slowly converting to toxins at the bottom of many of Minnesota's lakes and rivers. More

How a Queens home became a cradle of the gay rights movement. The Manfords’ door on 171st Street in Queens was always open, especially if you were a young gay man whose own family had closed the door on you. More

Even if it enrages your boss, social media speech is protected. As Facebook and Twitter become as central to workplace conversation as the company cafeteria, federal regulators are ordering employers to scale back policies that limit what workers can say online. More

Private pain and public debate take toll on Newtown parents. NEWTOWN, Conn. — Jimmy Greene and Nelba Márquez-Greene have not turned on a television or read a newspaper since their 6-year-old daughter, Ana, a blur of joyful energy who loved singing, dancing, floral headbands and the Bible, died more.... More

Lawfirms push to get young associates up to speed. On a recent January morning, attorney Randi Winter sat before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeanne Graham in St. Paul ready to argue for the dismissal of a lawsuit on behalf of client GMAC Mortgage. More

Why do we remember more from young adulthood than any other time? Memory researchers have been wrestling with the reminiscence bump since at least the 1980s, when studies began turning up evidence that memory has a peculiar affinity for events that happen during the third decade of life. More

Senate Democrats budget plan will reopen battle over taxes. Senate Democrats plan to draft a budget blueprint that calls for significantly higher taxes on the wealthy, oil and gas companies and corporations doing business overseas, reopening a battle over taxes Republicans had hoped to lay to rest with.... More

Among Blacks, pride is mixed with expectations for Obama. The Rev. Greggory L. Brown, a 59-year-old pastor of a small Lutheran church, committed himself to ministry and a life pursuing social justice on April 4, 1968 — the day the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was slain by an assassin’s bullet. More

Some give up their guns; others don't. On one side of Young Street, volunteers from First Presbyterian Church of Dallas attempted to persuade gun owners to turn in their firearms. They would receive $50 to $200 — from donors — and know that their guns would be destroyed. More

NTSB rules out excess battery voltage in Boston incident. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board ruled out on Sunday excess voltage as the cause of a battery fire on the Boeing Co 787 Dreamliner jet operated by Japan Airlines Co (JAL) at Boston airport this month. More

Clinging to youth at a cost. Chad Harrell is a lean and muscular quarterback, but he is also a 43-year-old quarterback. So, of course, his fiancée worried that a final pursuit of his glory days might leave him twisted into leather and plastic origami. More

Change comes: after four years, friends see shift in the Obamas. Barack and Michelle Obama have spent more than a thousand days on display before the nation’s eyes, but the personal changes they have undergone can be hard to detect. More

Military rules leave gay spouses out in the cold. Nakisha Hardy spent the first nine months of her marriage on a remote Army base in Afghanistan, a tour of duty punctuated by sporadic mortar blasts and constant e-mails to her spouse back home. More

Government settlement leaves food service industry vulnerable to lawsuits.... Allergic to gluten? What about peanuts? Federal disabilities law may be able to help. The Justice Department said in a recent settlement with a Massachusetts college that severe food allergies can be considered a disability under the law. More

Help! Sick traveler down! When Jessica MacKenzie Murthy needed medical attention in Bangalore for three bouts of food poisoning, a sinus infection and one pregnancy, she didn’t rush to the nearest ER. More

Tough flu season in U.S., especially for the elderly. This year’s flu season is shaping up to be “worse than average and particularly bad for the elderly,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the nation’s top federal disease-control official, said Friday. More

In reversal, House GOP agrees to lift debt limit. Backing down from their hard-line stance, House Republicans said Friday that they would agree to lift the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit for three months, with a requirement that both chambers of Congress pass a budget in that.... More

Airport full-body scanners to be removed. After years of complaints by passengers and members of Congress, the Transportation Security Administration said Friday that it would begin removing the controversial full-body scanners that produce revealing images of airline travelers.... More

Decline of PCs and shift to mobile hit Intel earnings. Each day seems to bring another development that emphasizes the staggering impact that the shift to mobile is having on traditional computing leaders. More

Boeing's challenge: fix Dreamliner, win back fliers' trust. Marian Burkhart was looking forward to traveling on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner. She and her husband settled into their seats, picked a movie and waited for what she called the "Taj Mahal plane" to take them from Houston to Los Angeles. More

U.S. housing construction surges in December to end best year since 2008. U.S. builders started work on homes in December at the fastest pace in 4½ years and finished 2012 as their best year for residential construction since the early stages of the housing crisis. More

New regulations shed light on looming health care reform costs for.... The ramifications of health care reform for business owners are coming into focus as regulators float new rules to govern employer-sponsored coverage. More

Web hunt for DNA sequences leaves privacy compromised. The genetic data posted online seemed perfectly anonymous — strings of billions of DNA letters from more than 1,000 people. But all it took was some clever sleuthing on the Web for a genetics researcher to identify five people he randomly selected from the study group. More

As manufacturing bounces back from recession, unions are left behind. Last July was a good month for factory workers in Anderson, Ind., where a Honda parts supplier announced plans to build a new plant and create up to 325 jobs. But it was a grim month in the Cleveland suburbs, where an industrial plastics firm.... More

Massachusetts governor offers new gun laws. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick introduced a new series of gun laws on Wednesday that would tighten rules on sales of weapons and ammunition, in the wake of last month's deadly school shooting in neighboring Connecticut. More

Jobless claims drop to five-year low. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits tumbled to a five-year low last week, a hopeful sign for the sluggish labor market. More

Next made-in-China boom: college graduates. SANYA, China — Zhang Xiaoping’s mother dropped out of school after sixth grade. Her father, one of 10 children, never attended. But Ms. Zhang, 20, is part of a new generation of Chinese taking advantage of a national effort to produce.... More

Some with autism diagnosis can overcome symptoms, says study. Doctors have long believed that disabling autistic disorders last a lifetime, but a new study has found that some children who exhibit signature symptoms of the disorder recover completely. More

New York State adopts toughest gun laws in U.S. New York became the first state since the Newtown, Conn., school massacre to tighten gun laws, passing a wide-ranging bill Tuesday cracking down on assault weapons and ammunition that lawmakers say should set an example for Washington as it.... More

Citing Rubio's ideas on immigration reform, White House sees hope for.... The Obama administration suggested Tuesday that there are signs that bipartisan cooperation might be possible on immigration reform, in light of some new ideas being championed by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.). More

Facebook unveils a new search tool. Facebook has spent eight years nudging its users to share everything they like and everything they do. Now, the company is betting it has enough data so that people can find whatever they want on Facebook. More

Obama gun proposal to look beyond mass shootings. A new federal assault weapons ban and background checks of all gun buyers, which President Obama is expected to propose on Wednesday, might have done little to prevent the massacre in Newtown, Conn., last month. More

An oil town where men are many and women are hounded. WILLISTON, N.D. — Christina Knapp and a friend were drinking shots at a bar in a nearby town several weeks ago when a table of about five men called them over and made an offer. They would pay the women $3,000 to strip naked and serve them.... More

Democrats eyeing White House in 2016 no longer avoiding gun debate. For the first time in more than a decade, Democratic presidential aspirants see a political advantage in championing far-reaching restrictions on guns. More

Americans tapping retirement savings to pay current expenses. A large and growing share of American workers are tapping their retirement savings accounts for non-retirement needs, raising broad questions about the effectiveness of one of the most important savings vehicles for old age. More

Hospitals turn away visitors with flu symptoms. People who wish to visit loved ones in the hospital take heed: At some medical centers, a cough or a sneeze will probably get you turned away. More

Retail sales improve, producer prices fall. Retail sales rose more than expected in December, the Commerce Department said Tuesday, as Americans shrugged off the threat of higher taxes and bought automobiles and a range of other goods, suggesting momentum in consumer spending as the year.... More

California to give Web courses a big trial. A plan to offer an array of online college classes at a California state university could, if the students are successful, open the door to teaching hundreds of thousands of California students at a lower cost via the Internet. More

No flu shot? Health workers pay price. Patients can refuse a flu shot. Should doctors and nurses have that right, too? That is the thorny question surfacing as U.S. hospitals increasingly crack down on employees who won't get flu shots, with some workers losing their jobs over the.... More

How the NRA became a much-feared lobbying group. In gun lore it’s known as the Revolt at Cincinnati. On May 21, 1977, and into the morning of May 22, a rump caucus of gun rights radicals took over the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association. More

Newtown debates schools fate after shooting. NEWTOWN, Conn. — Many people here still remember the huge green footprints that once led up to the front entrance of Sandy Hook Elementary School. Children were told that they had been left by the Jolly Green Giant. More

Pharmacies pressed to meet high demand for flu vaccine. Pharmacies around the city struggled to meet the demand for flu vaccinations on Sunday, a day after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declared a public health state of emergency in response to a drastic increase in the number of flu cases this year. More

In California, it's U.S. vs. State over marijuana. Stockton, CA -- Matthew R. Davies graduated from college with a master’s degree in business and a taste for enterprise, working in real estate, restaurants and mobile home parks before seizing on what he saw as uncharted territory with a vast.... More

Flu shot flaws leave experts queasy. The flu shot, it might be said, is the black sheep of the vaccine family. In good years, people ignore it because they think the flu is no big deal. In bad years -- like this one -- they complain that it doesn't work well enough. More

Why 64.8 percent of Americans didn't get a flu shot. As the country’s flu outbreak becomes an epidemic, odds are that you’ve had a few sheepish feelings about not doing something you probably should have: Gotten a flu shot. More

Dried out and title-scrubbed, flooded cars lure the unwary. At the far end of an enormous hangar, used cars rolled up one by one to the auction block. They had been buffed to a shine, but some carried telltale signs of damage. Puckered leather seats, a hint of mildew, headlights beaded with.... More

In Wyoming, many jobs but no place to call home. CASPER, Wyo. — After losing everything last year to Southern California’s soured economy, Tiffany Kipp and her family packed up three boxes and a diaper bag and caught a Greyhound bus to Wyoming, their best chance at a fresh start. More

Obama will seek citizenship path in one fast push. President Obama plans to push Congress to move quickly in the coming months on an ambitious overhaul of the immigration system that would include a path to citizenship for most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, senior.... More

Adopting from overseas now brings lengthy waits, sometimes heartbreak. For years, the common wisdom for Americans who wanted to adopt a baby quickly and easily was to go abroad. Rather than wrestle with the red tape and long waits associated with adopting in the United States, they could fly to countries where the.... More

Train a parent, spare a child. Someone asked me recently what my New Year’s resolution was as a parent. Without thinking, I said, “more creative bribing. More

New York City ties doctors' income to quality of care. In a bold experiment in performance pay, complaints from patients at New York City’s public hospitals and other measures of their care — like how long before they are discharged and how they fare afterward — will be reflected in.... More

Drivers with hands full get a backup: the car. PALO ALTO, Calif. — Driving around a college campus can be treacherous. Bikes and scooters zip out of nowhere, distracted students wander into traffic, and stopped cars and speed bumps suddenly appear. It takes a vigilant driver to avoid.... More

Sales of guns soar as U.S. weighs tougher limits. As Washington focuses on what Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will propose next week to curb gun violence, gun and ammunition sales are spiking in the rest of the country as people rush to expand their arsenals in advance of any restrictions.... More

Drug agency recommends lower doses of sleep aids for women. For two decades, millions of Americans have taken Ambien to help them sleep at night. But for years, the Food and Drug Administration has gotten complaints that people felt drowsy the morning after taking the medicine or its successors, and.... More

White House considers $50 million plan to add police in schools. The Obama administration is considering a $50 million plan to fund hundreds of police officers in public schools, a Democratic senator said, part of a broad gun violence agenda that is likely to include a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips.... More

"Mind if I smoke?" taking on new meaning for D.C. hosts. We had polished off dinner, tucked the kids into bed and cracked open a bottle of wine. That’s when our guest pulled out a tiny change purse and took from it what my husband and I thought was a cigarette. It was actually a joint. More

Putting guys with guns in schools. Four hundred miles from Sandy Hook Elementary, a superintendent named Mike Strutt left a morning meeting on Dec. 14 and decided to place his schools on “threat alert.” He was concerned about a copycat attack on the day of the Connecticut.... More

Heat, flood or icy cold, extreme weather rages worldwide. WORCESTER, England — Britons may remember 2012 as the year the weather spun off its rails in a chaotic concoction of drought, deluge and flooding, but the unpredictability of it all turns out to have been all too predictable: Around the world.... More

Gabrielle Gifford's anti-gun violence groups aims to raise $20 million for.... An anti-gun violence group founded by former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is hoping to raise $20 million to spend on the 2014 election — matching what the National Rifle Association spent in 2012. More

Pap test may prove useful in finding cancers of uterus and ovaries. The Pap test, which has prevented countless deaths from cervical cancer, may eventually help to detect cancers of the uterus and ovaries as well, a new study suggests. More

FDA requires cuts to dosages of sleep pills The Food and Drug Administration announced on Thursday that it was requiring manufacturers of popular sleeping pills like Ambien and Zolpimist to cut their recommended dosage in half for women, after laboratory studies showed that they can.... More

U.S. consumer watchdog to issue new mortgage rules. Banks and other lenders will be prohibited from making home loans that offer deceptive teaser rates or require no documentation from borrowers, and will be required to take more steps to ensure that borrowers can repay, under new consumer.... More

Widespread flu is leading a range of winter's ills. It is not your imagination — more people you know are sick this winter, even people who have had flu shots. More

Washington National Cathedral will begin hosting same-sex weddings. Washington National Cathedral — the seat of the Episcopal Church, one of the world’s largest cathedrals and the host of the official prayer service for the presidential inauguration later this month — has decided to start hosting same-sex.... More

Study questions the effectiveness of therapy for suicidal teenagers. Most adolescents who plan or attempt suicide have already received at least some mental health treatment, raising questions about the effectiveness of current approaches to helping troubled youths, according to the largest in-depth analysis to.... More

Not even close: 2012 was hottest ever. The numbers are in: 2012, the year of a surreal March heat wave, a severe drought in the Corn Belt and a huge storm that caused broad devastation in the Middle Atlantic States, turns out to have been the hottest year ever recorded in the.... More

A financial service for people fed up with banks. Like many people, Josh Reich got fed up with his bank after it charged him overdraft fees and he endured painful customer service calls to fight them. But unlike most people, Mr. Reich, a software engineer from Australia, decided to come up.... More

Giffords, Kelly launch gun control effort. Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband launched a political action committee aimed at curbing gun violence on Tuesday, the second anniversary of the Tucson shooting that killed six people and left her critically injured. More

Holiday inauguration costs Feds a day off. Inauguration Day normally entails an extra paid holiday for federal workers in the Washington area, but no such luck applies this year. That’s because the public swearing-in ceremony coincides with another federal holiday — the Jan. 21.... More

Growth of health spending stays low. National health spending climbed to $2.7 trillion in 2011, or an average of $8,700 for every person in the country, but as a share of the economy, it remained stable for the third consecutive year, the Obama administration said Monday. More

Chicago faulted on learning disabilities. When Rashaan Payne was 2 years old, his pediatrician noticed that he was not talking at the level of most children his age. After autism was diagnosed, Rashaan began receiving speech therapy once a week at his home on the South Side of Chicago,.... More

Mobile apps drive rapid changes in searches. When the Federal Trade Commission decided last week to close its antitrust investigation of Google without charges, one important factor, though hardly mentioned, was just beneath the surface: the mobile revolution. More

Customers fearing new laws pack gun show. Women pushing strollers stopped to peer at handguns in glass cases. Men squinted through scopes. The "clack-clack" of stun guns crackled overhead. A man meandered through the crowd, a black rifle slung over his back with a cardboard sign: "For.... More

Overweight-only gym offers supportive atmosphere. DALLAS - Downsize Fitness is an exclusive health club, evocative of the nation's trendiest gyms. But there's a strict requirement to join: You must be 50 pounds or more overweight. More

GOP split over gay marriage. Facing a tidal shift among voters embracing same-sex marriage, gay Republicans are offering their party a graceful retreat. But religious conservatives warn that retreat will doom the GOP. More

12 states get failing grades on public school policies from advocacy group. In just a few short years, state legislatures and education agencies across the country have sought to transform American public education by passing a series of laws and policies overhauling teacher tenure, introducing the use of standardized.... More

Students rush to Web classes, but profits may come later. In August, four months after Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng started the online education company Coursera, its free college courses had drawn in a million users, a faster launching than either Facebook or Twitter. More

Canada's guest worker program could become model for U.S. immigration.... OJOCALIENTE, Mexico — When Oscar Reyes heads north for seasonal work every spring, he no longer pays a smuggler to sneak him through the desert past the U.S. Border Patrol. He takes Air Canada. More

White House weighs broad gun control agenda in wake of Newtown shootings. The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in.... More

Relocation therapy. Almost four years ago, Marilyn Kotcher suddenly became a widow. And the large — 2,250-square-foot — condominium in Fort Lee, N.J., that she and her husband had bought together and lovingly remodeled no longer seemed like home. More

Ergonomic seats? Most pupils squirm in a classroom classic. Education trends come and go: Mandatory pledges of allegiance, the new math, forcing left-handed children to write with the right hand. And then there is the classroom chair. More

Health insurers raise some rates by double digits. Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in.... More

Supreme Court to examine Indian Child Welfare Act requirements in adoption.... The Supreme Court added an emotional case to its docket Friday, agreeing to review a lower court’s decision that federal law requires a couple to return the child they cared for since birth to her Native American father. More

The breast pump industry is booming, thanks to Obamacare. The legislators who drafted Obamacare wrestled with cosmic issues of health and spending, but here’s one consequence they didn’t foresee: a boom in demand for breast pumps that has left some retailers scrambling to keep up. More

Job creation stayed steady, despite economic worries. Despite concerns about looming tax increases and government spending cuts, American employers added 155,000 jobs in December. Employees also enjoyed slightly faster wage growth and worked longer hours, which could bode well for future hiring. More

Pregnancy centers gain influence in anti-abortion arena. WACO, Tex. — With free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, along with diapers, parenting classes and even temporary housing, pregnancy centers are playing an increasingly influential role in the anti-abortion movement. More

Tax code may be the most progressive since 1979. With 2013 bringing tax increases on the incomes of a small sliver of the richest Americans, the country’s top earners now face a heavier tax burden than at any time since Jimmy Carter was president. More

Firms use fake data to thwart hackers. To confront one of the newest and most damaging crimes, Brown Printing Co. turned to one of the oldest tricks in human history: deception. More

Business leaders say 'cliff' deal won't ease economic uncertainty. A day after Congress managed to avert the fiscal cliff, business leaders warned that the agreement will hurt sales and hiring, won’t unlock investment and leaves the economy riddled with congressionally imposed land mines for months to come. More

Has the 'fiscal cliff' fight changed how Washington works? As ugly as they were, the “fiscal cliff” negotiations produced something Washington hadn’t seen in a long time: strongly bipartisan votes in the House and the Senate on a big, contentious issue. More

In China, grass roots groups take on H.I.V,/AIDS outreach work. GUANGZHOU, China — As he waited to give blood for an H.I.V. test one recent afternoon, Le, a 25-year-old marketing professional, explained why he was there. “I was aware of the consequences” of not using a condom, he said, “but somehow.... More

Immigration change to ease family separations. Obama administration officials unveiled rules on Wednesday that will allow many American citizens — perhaps hundreds of thousands — to avoid long separations from immediate family members who are illegal immigrants as they apply to become.... More

Texas among 10 states facing lawsuits over education funding. This month in an Austin courtroom, two-thirds of the school districts in Texas will resume their argument that the state’s school-financing system is inadequate and inequitable and that it creates a de facto statewide property tax, forbidden.... More

Study suggests lower death rate for those deemed to be overweight. A century ago, Elsie Scheel was the perfect woman. So said a 1912 article in The New York Times about how Miss Scheel, 24, was chosen by the “medical examiner of the 400 ‘co-eds’ ” at Cornell University as a woman “whose very presence.... More

Experts say proof is lacking for energy drinks' value. Energy drinks are the fastest-growing part of the beverage industry, with sales in the United States reaching more than $10 billion in 2012 — more than Americans spent on iced tea or sports beverages like Gatorade. More

A bigger payroll tax bite for most households. Only the most affluent American households will pay higher income taxes this year under the terms of a deal that passed Congress on Tuesday, but most households will face higher payroll taxes because the deal does not extend a two-year-old tax.... More

Amid pressure, House passes fiscal deal. Ending a climactic fiscal showdown in the final hours of the 112th Congress, the House late Tuesday passed and sent to President Obama legislation to avert big income tax increases on most Americans and prevent large cuts in spending for the.... More

Destination: wellness SO I’m sitting in a hotel in upstate New York with my feet in a bucket of warm water charged with electricity when it suddenly hits me that maybe “getting well” wasn’t going to be as much fun as I thought it was going to be. More

Antivirus software performs poorly against new viruses. The antivirus industry has a dirty little secret: its products are often not very good at stopping viruses. The programs rarely, if ever, block freshly minted computer viruses, experts say. More

U.S. birthrate dips as Hispanic pregnancies fall. Hispanic women in the United States, who have generally had the highest fertility rates in the country, are choosing to have fewer children. More

Senate passes legislation to allow taxes on affluent to rise. The Senate, in a pre-dawn vote two hours after the deadline passed to avert automatic tax increases, overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday that would allow tax rates to rise only on affluent Americans while temporarily suspending sweeping.... More

California's support for death penalty goes against trend. Even as Californians voted to maintain the death penalty, the nation's support for capital punishment continued to wane in 2012, with relatively few states performing executions. More

As nation confronts rising addiction, study finds drugs firms influence.... Over much of the past decade, the official word on OxyContin was that it rarely posed problems of addiction for patients. The label on the drug, which was approved by the FDA, said the risks of addiction were “reported to be small.” More

Dems give in on taxes, but still no avoiding fiscal cliff. With a New Year’s Eve deadline hours away, Democrats abandoned their earlier demand to raise tax rates on household income over $250,000 a year, as President Obama vowed during the recent presidential campaign. More

Children's privacy rule could have wider effect. WASHINGTON - Unbeknown to the lucky children who unwrapped tablets or smartphones this holiday season, new rules issued in Washington to protect their privacy on those devices could have profound implications for the future of the Internet and.... More

Disruptions: the real hazards of e-devices on planes. Over the last year, flying with phones and other devices has become increasingly dangerous. In September, a passenger was arrested in El Paso after refusing to turn off his cellphone as the plane was landing. In October, a man in Chicago was.... More

Federal marriage act may force deportation of many immigrant gay spouses. Kelly Costello and Fabiola Morales had a storybook wedding in the summer of 2011, with 12 bridesmaids and matching white gowns. Their fathers gave them away at a Unitarian ceremony in the District, and both extended families were on hand for.... More

Michigan hospital blazes trail in fight against fungal meningitis. After his first day working at St Joseph Mercy Ann Arbor hospital's newly created Fungal Outbreak Clinic, Dr David Vandenberg struggled to describe to his boss the enormity of what lay ahead. He settled on a line from the movie Jaws. More

Halfway houses prove lucrative to those at the top. The Kintock Group, the second-largest operator of halfway houses in New Jersey, is a nonprofit agency that is financed almost entirely by government contracts. But it is run like a well-heeled family business. More

Reinventing "church" as spirituality wanes. DALLAS — The mural painted on the side of a building in the Deep Ellum warehouse district here is intentionally vague, simply showing a faceless man in a suit holding an umbrella over the words “Life in Deep Ellum.” More

Senate seeks bipartisan formula to reach tax deal. Senate leaders and their aides spent Saturday searching for a formula to extend tax cuts for most Americans that could win bipartisan support in the Senate and final approval in the fractious House by the new year, hoping to prevent large tax.... More

Retailers are now loading up our inboxes. When consumers close a door, marketers open a window. Americans signed up in droves to stop junk mail, catalogs and telemarketers, so companies are taking a digital path to our cash -- e-mail. More

Maine's same-sex marriage law takes effect. PORTLAND, Maine — Arriving in a limo, Donna Galluzzo and Lisa Gorney had all the trappings of a traditional wedding: Rings, flowers, wedding vows, an entourage and a friend to officiate. More

Find the words to say goodbye. MY father spoke to his college roommate every day for 50 years. Though the two lived in different states, 800 miles apart, they were business partners, sounding boards and friends. Then one day my father called and his friend wasn’t there. More

Senate leaders set to work on last minute tax agreement. At the urging of President Obama, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate set to work Friday night to assemble a last-minute tax deal that could pass both chambers of Congress and avert large tax increases and budget cuts next year,.... More

Walmart seen as obstacle to change, despite safety vows. When Walmart’s chief executive, Michael Duke, appeared at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting in New York this month, a raucous crowd of protesters awaited him. More

Top ten federal workforce stories of 2012. It was a rancorous year in Washington, with Democrats and Republicans raising their swords over taxes, spending and the role of government amid a presidential campaign. The government came close to going over a fiscal cliff of spending cuts and.... More

More private colleges holding line on tuition. Savvy families shopping for college know that tuition typically rises faster than inflation. So Lauren Seely and her parents in Northwest Washington were startled to learn this year that an upper-tier private college on her short list had.... More

In flurry of activity, only muted hope for a fiscal cliff deal. President Obama will meet with Congressional leaders on Friday, and House Republicans summoned lawmakers back for a Sunday session, in a last-ditch effort to avert a fiscal crisis brought on by automatic tax increases and spending cuts.... More

Too young to have a heart attack. The foreshadowing escaped me: The night before we left for our summer vacation in Michigan, I accidentally stepped on my Kindle — which, like my heart, I cannot live without — and broke it. More

Putin signs bill that bars U.S. adoptions, upending families. President Vladimir V. Putin’s decision on Thursday to enact a ban on the adoption of Russian children by American citizens dealt a serious blow to an already strained diplomatic relationship, but for hundreds of Americans enmeshed in the.... More

Type 2 diabetes linked to high fructose corn syrup. Researchers from the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford say they have found an association between countries that have more high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in their food supply and those that have higher rates of.... More

Years after law passed, still no rules on rearview safety. SAN FRANCISCO -- In the private hell of a mother's grief, the sounds come back to Judy Neiman. The SUV door slamming. The slight bump as she backed up in the bank parking lot. More

Senators to return with five days left and no clear path. With just five days left to make a deal, President Obama and members of the Senate were set to return to Washington on Thursday with no clear path out of their fiscal morass even as the Treasury Department warned that the government will soon.... More

Eat, drink and be nice, say new etiquette courses for kids. IT’S dinnertime, and 6-year-old Joaquin Hurtado is staying in his seat. He hasn’t stood up, run around the table or wrestled with his little brother. Good thing. More

Dockworkers' strike threatens to close east coast ports. Anyone who has seen “On the Waterfront” knows East Coast longshoremen can be a tough bunch. The dockworkers are flexing their muscles again, threatening a strike beginning Sunday that would shut seaports from Massachusetts to Texas. More

Europe's fading fortunes push young professionals abroad. SAO PAULO, brazil — Tiago Lambuca left Portugal to search for work here as an architect, but the decision to emigrate was about more than earning a wage. It was a generational choice, of a growing region over one he feels is exhausted; of a.... More

Health care sector systems are vulnerable to hackers. As the health-care industry rushed onto the Internet in search of efficiencies and improved care in recent years, it has exposed a wide array of vulnerable hospital computers and medical devices to hacking, according to documents and interviews. More

Democrats push for tax cuts they once opposed. Democrats seeking a deal to avert the year-end “fiscal cliff” are trying to etch into stone the signature economic achievement of Republican President George W. Bush by permanently extending tax cuts enacted during his tenure. More

Gun support runs deeper than politics. BRYAN, Texas - Adam Lanza's mother was among the tens of millions of U.S. gun owners. She legally had a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle and a pair of handguns, which her 20-year-old son used to kill 20 children and six adults in 10 minutes inside.... More

Boy Scouts have history of laying blame on victim. When a lawsuit alleged that two young brothers in Michigan had been molested "hundreds of times" by a troop leader, the Boy Scouts denied responsibility and pointed the finger at someone else -- the boys' recently widowed mother. More

Pay in oil fields, not college, is luring Montana youths. SIDNEY, Mont. — For most high school seniors, a college degree is the surest path to a decent job and a stable future. But here in oil country, some teenagers are choosing the oil fields over universities, forgoing higher education for jobs.... More

Exercise and the ever-smarter human brain. Anyone whose resolve to exercise in 2013 is a bit shaky might want to consider an emerging scientific view of human evolution. It suggests that we are clever today in part because a million years ago, we could outrun and outwalk most other.... More

Christmas for Christians, Muslims and Jews. The tree has decorations made of olive wood from Palestine, Christmas balls of glass, snowflakes and Hanukkah ornaments. More

Poll: Public sours on what 2013 will bring. Public expectations about the year ahead are bleaker than they’ve been in more than a decade, with Republicans leading the way in adopting gloomier outlooks, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. More

Is the cure for cancer inside you? Claudia was hollering at her daughter to wake up. “Dad got the Nobel!” she cried. Alexis, still half-asleep, told her she was crazy. Her father had been dead for three days. More

Laws of physics can't trump the bonds of love. Jeffrey Wright is well known around his high school in Louisville, Ky., for his antics as a physics teacher, which include exploding pumpkins, hovercraft and a scary experiment that involves a bed of nails, a cinder block and a sledgehammer. More

Getting polio campaigns back on track. How in the world did something as innocuous as the sugary pink polio vaccine turn into a flash point between Islamic militants and Western “crusaders,” flaring into a confrontation so ugly that teenage girls — whose only “offense” is.... More

Mergers sweep through health care sector. Health care organizations are increasingly looking for strength in size, as a wave of mergers and partnerships brings together groups that traditionally eyed one another with suspicion. More

On gun control, a lack of political will - until now. President Barack Obama is asking a team led by Vice President Joe Biden to offer "concrete proposals" to curb gun violence no later than January, in the aftermath of the horrific massacre at a Connecticut elementary school. More

260 Illinois clergy members sign support letter for gay marriage. More than 250 religious leaders in Illinois have signed an open letter in support of same-sex marriage, which the legislature is likely to take up in January. More

Citing broken system, critics fight Russia's adoption ban. MOSCOW — The orphans’ faces can be called up on screen, their photos the size of postage stamps, along with a few data points and a note about their personalities, often just a word or two. More

Search for way through fiscal impasse turns to Senate. With little more than a week for lawmakers to avert huge tax increases and spending cuts, attention is turning from the gridlocked House to the Senate, where some Republicans on Sunday endorsed President Obama’s call for a partial deal to.... More

Stanford gets a chaplain for atheists. Chaplain John Figdor has a divinity degree from Harvard. He counsels those in need and visits the sick. And he works with Stanford students under the Office of Religious Life. So Figdor is the last guy you'd tag with the "A" word. But, yes. The.... More

Associated Press picks top ten news stories of the year. The horrific massacre of 26 children and staff at a Connecticut elementary school, along with other mass shootings, was the top news story of 2012, narrowly edging out the U.S. election, according to The Associated Press' annual poll of U.S. editors and news directors. More

History of gun control is cautionary tale. At 3 a.m. on July 2, 1993, Steve Sposato sat down in his darkened living room to write, by hand, a letter to the president of the United States. His life had just been shattered. More

Drugs aim to make several types of cancer self-destruct. For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. More

For poor students, leap to college often ends in hard fall. GALVESTON, Tex. — Angelica Gonzales marched through high school in Goth armor — black boots, chains and cargo pants — but undermined her pose of alienation with a place on the honor roll. More

Plight of teen prompts education debate, protest, in China. As the end of middle school approached this year, Zhan Haite, 15, faced two choices: attend vocational school in Shanghai in the fall or move to her ancestral home in distant Jiangxi province to take the high school entrance exam and study.... More

In France, opposition to gay marriage grows louder. BLERANCOURT, France — For Patrick Laplace, the mayor of this trim little town, the Socialist government’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage in France is a colossal mistake. More

Retailers try to adapt to device-hopping shoppers. Ryan O’Neil, a Connecticut government employee, was in the market to buy a digital weather station this month. His wife researched options on their iPad, but even though she found the lowest-price option there, Mr. O’Neil made the purchase.... More

Dangerous abcesses add to tainted drug's threat. Dr. David Vandenberg admitted three patients to St. Joseph Mercy Ann Arbor hospital on Tuesday, and called a fourth with news that left her in tears: She had a large abscess deep inside her back, near her spine, and would need surgery as soon.... More

Walking the tightrope on mental health coverage. Insurance covers more mental health care than many people may realize, and more people will soon have the kind of health insurance that does so. But coverage goes only so far when there aren’t enough practitioners who accept it. More

China probes YUM Brands' KFC over safety of chicken products.. Yum Brands Inc's fast-food chain KFC was supplied with chicken in China that contained excessive amounts of antibiotics, said food safety authorities investigating allegations of tainted KFC products. More

Marijuana, not yet legal for Californians, might as well be. LOS ANGELES — Let Colorado and Washington be the marijuana trailblazers. Let them struggle with the messy details of what it means to actually legalize the drug. Marijuana is, as a practical matter, already legal in much of California. More

Boehner cancels tax vote in face of G.O.P. revolt. Speaker John A. Boehner’s effort to pass fallback legislation to avert a fiscal crisis in less than two weeks collapsed Thursday night in an embarrassing defeat after conservative Republicans refused to support legislation that would allow.... More

Gaps in F.B.I. data undercut background checks for guns. Nearly two decades after lawmakers began requiring background checks for gun buyers, significant gaps in the F.B.I.’s database of criminal and mental health records allow thousands of people to buy firearms every year who should be barred.... More

Snow, absent for so long, is reminding Midwest what winters are about. CHICAGO — Snow, absent for so long in much of the Midwest that people seemed to have forgotten all about it, returned with a fury on Thursday. High winds whipped the region, near whiteout conditions left motorists stranded and holiday travel.... More

Men still don't like it when their wives outearn them. Nearly half a century ago, Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique helped kick off the modern feminist movement. Friedan described the widespread melancholy of women who felt trapped by the notion that they could find fulfillment only as wives and.... More

Lean times for America's undeserving poor. The American welfare state has grown, but so have the ranks of the poor. As the U.S. tries to focus help on those deemed most worthy, millions of adults are getting squeezed. More

Obama vows fast action in new push for gun control. President Obama declared on Wednesday that he would make gun control a “central issue” as he opens his second term, promising to submit broad new firearm proposals to Congress no later than January and to employ the full power of his office.... More

Obama and Boehner diverge sharply on fiscal plan. Hopes for a broad deficit-reduction agreement faded on Wednesday as President Obama insisted he had offered Republicans “a fair deal” while Speaker John A. Boehner moved for a House vote as early as Thursday on a scaled-down plan to limit.... More

Lessons in fine print on assault weapons ban of '90s. More than two decades before Newtown, there was Stockton. In January 1989, a troubled drifter in his 20s opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle on a California elementary school yard packed with students. More

The unequal state of America: redistricting up. In the town that launched the War on Poverty 48 years ago, the poor are getting poorer despite the government's help. And the rich are getting richer because of it. More

"Fiscal cliff" deal closer, but gaps remain. After making major concessions on long-held "fiscal cliff" positions, President Barack Obama and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner will test the reaction Tuesday of their respective parties in the U.S. Congress and continue talks.... More

25 lessons about first-graders Among the many horrors associated with the killing of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., is that they were all first graders. On Sunday I spoke with Joanne Strongin, a longtime first-grade teacher at E.M. Baker.... More

Grapefruit is a culprit in more drug reactions. The patient didn’t overdose on medication. She overdosed on grapefruit juice. The 42-year-old was barely responding when her husband brought her to the emergency room. More

Children can usually recover from emotional trauma. Perhaps the most remarkable part of her story is that today she sleeps just fine. On April 20, 1999, Crystal Woodman, 16, was studying for a test in the library at Columbine High School when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris walked in and began.... More

Gun rights advocates feeling heat after school shooting. The call came Friday night, as Americans were just beginning the struggle to make sense of one of the most horrific mass shootings in a long history of them. The anonymous caller was angry, and he was looking for Philip Van Cleave, who heads.... More

Boehner opens door to tax hikes. The first real movement in the "fiscal cliff" talks began on Sunday, with Republican House Speaker John Boehner edging slightly closer to President Barack Obama's key demands as they try to avert the steep tax hikes and spending cuts set to.... More

Apps give preschoolers a first look at TV shows. In 2014, the preschool cable network Nick Jr. plans to introduce a television show featuring a little boy, his miniature pet dragon and a magic stick. But the show, “Wallykazam,” will not be new to users of smartphones and tablets. More

For Spaniards, having a job no longer guarantees a paycheck. VALENCIA, Spain — Over the past two years, Ana María Molina Cuevas, 36, has worked five shifts a week in a ceramics factory on the outskirts of this city, hand-rolling paint onto tiles. But at the end of the month, she often went unpaid. More

The nation heads back to school with new worries. In Boston, the public schools have asked the police to step up visits to elementary schools throughout the day on Monday. In Denver, psychologists and social workers were prepared to visit students. More

Black jobless rate is twice that of whites. In the quarter-century that Armentha Cruise has run her Silver Spring staffing firm, the nation has made strides toward racial equality. Voters have twice elected a black president, African Americans shine among Hollywood’s brightest stars,.... More

Alcohol dependency drug wins EU green light. A novel drug to fight alcohol dependency was given a green light by European regulators on Friday, providing a boost to Danish drugmaker Lundbeck at a time when its top product faces a big drop in sales. More

For student borrowers, relief now may mean a big tax bill later. Those breathing a sigh of relief that their student loan payments are now in line with their income may want to re-examine the rules that set the payment in the first place. More

Nation reels after Connecticut massacre. A 20-year-old man wearing combat gear and armed with semiautomatic pistols and a semiautomatic rifle killed 26 people — 20 of them children — in an attack in an elementary school in central Connecticut on Friday. More

Most governors refuse to set up health exchanges. The Obama administration said Friday that more than half the states had rejected its pleas to set up their own health insurance exchanges, dealing a setback to President Obama’s hopes that Republicans would join a White House campaign to.... More

Will more female Senators mean less gridlock? Last month, most of the 20 women who will serve in the Senate next year gathered in the Capitol for a meet-and-greet — and a show of strength. More

Consumer prices post first drop in six months. Consumer prices fell in November for the first time in six months, pointing to muted inflation pressures that should allow the Federal Reserve to stay on its ultra-easy monetary policy path as it nurses the economy back to health. More

Hunger spreads through Syria as war intensifies. Desperation for food is growing in parts of Syria, where fist fights or dashes across the civil war front lines have become part of the daily struggle to secure a loaf of bread. More

Building alluring campuses, with I.O.U.s Some call it the Edifice Complex. Others have named it the Law of More, or the Taj Mahal syndrome. A decade-long spending binge to build academic buildings, dormitories and recreational facilities — some of them inordinately lavish to attract.... More

Life expectancy rises around the world, study finds. A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday. More

Fed ties stimulus to jobs, inflation, in unprecedented steps to bolster.... The Federal Reserve will take steps to bolster the economy until the unemployment rate falls to 6.5 percent or inflation looks likely to exceed 2.5 percent, the central bank said Wednesday in a historic move that for the first time specifies.... More

Silent retreats rising popularity poses a challenge: how to handle the.... The headline in the monthly Ward 5 newspaper described what sounded like an antidote to the nonstop iPhone-checking, list-making, ladder-climbing, goal-setting, Washington mind-set: “Refuge for the Metropolitan Hermit.” More

Groups vow to push "Right to work" in other states. The conservative groups that supported Michigan’s new “right to work” law — winning a stunning victory over unions, even in the heart of American labor — vowed Wednesday to replicate that success elsewhere. But the search for the next.... More

Home aides seek right to join one of Minnesota's biggest unions. One of the state's largest unions is seeking a change in the law that would allow it to bargain on behalf of thousands of people who provide home care to elderly or disabled Minnesotans, including their own family members. More

Rising temperatures threaten fundamental change for ski slopes. NEWBURY, N.H. — Helena Williams had a great day of skiing here at Mount Sunapee shortly after the resort opened at the end of November, but when she came back the next day, the temperatures had warmed and turned patches of the trails from white to brown. More

Wisconsin Planned Parenthood sues over abortion medication. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin has filed a legal challenge to the state law that subjects doctors who perform medication-induced abortions to possible criminal charges. Planned Parenthood stopped offering the medication abortions when the law.... More

Reading boosts homeless students. Children who are homeless or moving from home to home face longer odds when it comes to succeeding in school, but studies from the University of Minnesota have identified two key ways to help them overcome the obstacles of their living.... More

Why afternoon may be the best time to exercise. Does exercise influence the body’s internal clock? Few of us may be conscious of it, but our bodies, and in turn our health, are ruled by rhythms. More

Business leaders taking unlikely stance on taxes. A broad swath of the nation’s leading chief executives dropped its opposition to tax increases on the wealthiest Americans on Tuesday, while the White House quietly pressed Wall Street titans for their support as well. More

For lesser crimes, rethinking life in jail. Stephanie George and Judge Roger Vinson had quite different opinions about the lockbox seized by the police from her home in Pensacola. She insisted she had no idea that a former boyfriend had hidden it in her attic. Judge Vinson considered the.... More

Protesters to march on Michigan capitol over "right to work" vote. As many as 10,000 labor union workers from throughout Michigan and the U.S. Midwest are expected to march on the Michigan Capitol building in freezing temperatures on Tuesday to protest likely passage of a "right-to-work" law. More

Apps for children fall short on disclosure to parents, report says. Several hundred of the most popular educational and gaming mobile apps for children fail to give parents basic explanations about what kinds of personal information the apps collect from children, who can see that data and what they use it for,.... More

Understanding how children learn empathy. The mother was trying to hold the baby still, and I was pulling gently on the ear, angling for a better look at the infant’s eardrum. The wriggling baby didn’t like any of it, and her whimpering quickly turned to full-fledged wails. More

U.S. students still lag globally in math and science, tests show. Fourth- and eighth-grade students in the United States continue to lag behind students in several East Asian countries and some European nations in math and science, although American fourth graders are closer to the top performers in reading,.... More

Obesity in young is seen as falling in several cities. After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines. The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb..... More

Use of public transportation is on the rise. When Sheyenne Reyes was growing up in Riverside she could always find a seat on the public bus. Reyes is 21 now, and while waiting for the Route 1 line to take her to work last week, the college student lamented that these days the bus often.... More

In Rust Belt, a teenager's climb from poverty. Week after week, the mailman climbed the steep hill of Shenango Street to the house with the busted porch steps. “Dear Miss Rouzzo,” the letters began, or “Dear Tabitha Rouzzo.” The college catalogues barely fit in the mailbox. More

When daily stress gets in the way of life. I was about to give an hour-long talk to hundreds of people when one of the organizers of the event asked, “Do you get nervous when you give speeches?” My response: Who, me? No. Of course not. More

Same-sex issue pushes justices into overdrive. Life moves fast these days, and so does the law. In the civil rights era, the Supreme Court waited decades to weigh in on interracial marriage. On Friday, by contrast, the court did not hesitate to jump into the middle of one of the most.... More

In girl's last hope, altered immune cells beat leukemia. Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince. It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. More

New taxes to take effect to fund health care law. For more than a year, politicians have been fighting over whether to raise taxes on high-income people. They rarely mention that affluent Americans will soon be hit with new taxes adopted as part of the 2010 health care law. More

Big money bets on a housing rebound. DAVID N. MILLER, a master of bailouts, steps to the dais and coolly explains how the financial world went crazy. It is February 2010. The anger behind Occupy Wall Street is building. More

Arithmetic on taxes shows top rate is just a starting point. Despite hints in recent days that President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner might compromise on the tax rate to be paid by top earners, a host of other knotty tax questions could still derail a deal to avert a fiscal crisis in January. More

A family, for a few days a year. GUATEMALA CITY — The little boy flies like an airplane through the hotel, his arms outstretched. Then he leaps like a superhero, beaming as the red lights on his new sneakers flash and flicker, while the American couple he is with dissolve in.... More

Christmas shopping: suffer, spend, repeat. IN these final weeks before Christmas, it may strike you that retailers have gone out of their way to make holiday shopping as unpleasant an experience as possible. The odd truth is that they probably have. More

Obama says he's ready to work with Republicans to avoid fiscal cliff. President Barack Obama, accused by Republican House Speaker John Boehner of pushing the country toward the "fiscal cliff," said on Saturday he was ready to work with congressional Republicans on a comprehensive plan to cut budget deficits as.... More

Agencies make plans for furloughs if Congress can't agree on fiscal cliff.... Federal agencies are sharpening their plans to carry out drastic, automatic spending cuts starting Jan. 2 if the Obama administration and Congress cannot agree on a deficit reduction strategy in the coming days. More

In Michigan, heart of organized labor, Republicans push to limit union.... Republicans in Michigan are acting swiftly to adopt broad limits on the ability to organize workers, as the war over organized labor moves into the state that gave rise to modern industrial unions. More

Jobless rate edges down to lowest level in four years. Despite fears of a slowdown caused by gridlock in Washington, the economic recovery moved forward at a steady pace in November, pushing unemployment to its lowest level in four years. More

Supreme Court to hear two challenges to gay marriage. WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would enter the national debate over same-sex marriage, agreeing to hear a pair of cases challenging state and federal laws that define marriage to include only unions of a man and a.... More

San Francisco gays warned about meningitis outbreak in New York. San Francisco health officials warned gay men Thursday to get vaccinated against meningitis if they are planning to travel to New York City, where an outbreak of cases of the bacterial form of the disease has been reported. More

Federal workers petition White House for Christmas Eve off. Federal employees have petitioned the president through the White House’s “We the People” platform to make Christmas Eve, December 24, a day off of work this year. The Obama administration requires 25,000 signatures before it responds to.... More

Employment growth quickens; jobless rate at 7.7%. Employment grew faster than expected in November, but a drop in the unemployment rate to nearly a four-year low as people gave up the search for work suggested the labor market was still tepid. More

Two laws are welcomed after midnight in Seattle. At 12:01 Thursday morning, the King County administration building here opened its doors to hundreds of couples waiting to apply for marriage licenses, the first day that same-sex couples were able to apply after Washington voters last month.... More

New York's first medical marijuana dispensary opens. MONTCLAIR, N.J. — They skulked in and out like criminals, shoulders hunched, heads down, declining to comment. It was the opening of New Jersey’s first and so far only medical marijuana dispensary, in downtown Montclair, on Thursday, nearly.... More

Inside Planned Parenthood's campaign strategy. Planned Parenthood Action Fund earned an honor this campaign cycle that had nothing to do with women’s health: It was the most effective political group in the 2012 election. More

Some in GOP urge backing tax hikes for changes in safety-net programs. A growing chorus of Republicans is urging House leaders to abandon their staunch opposition to higher tax rates for the wealthy with the aim of clearing the way for a broad deal that would also rein in the cost of federal health and retirement.... More

For PC virus victims, pay or else. CULVER CITY, Calif. — Kidnappers used to make ransom notes with letters cut out of magazines. Now, notes simply pop up on your computer screen, except the hostage is your PC. More

States cut anti-smoking outlays despite record tobacco revenue. Faced with tight budgets, states have spent less on tobacco prevention over the past two years than in any period since the national tobacco settlement in 1998, despite record high revenues from the settlement and tobacco taxes, according to a.... More

Interest groups push to fill margins of health coverage. The chiropractors were out in force, lobbying for months to get their services included in every state’s package of essential health benefits that will be guaranteed under the new health care law. More

Fed official seeks to rein in bank size One of the most influential policymakers at the Federal Reserve, Daniel Tarullo, publicly debated options Tuesday for ending bailouts of big banks considered too big to fail, signaling that the contentious issue may move to the forefront in the.... More

Productivity fastest in two years, labor costs subdued. Nonfarm productivity increased at a much faster clip than initially thought in the third quarter as businesses held the line on hiring even as output surged, with unit labor costs falling at their fastest pace in almost a year. More

Extended use of breast cancer drug suggested. The widely prescribed drug tamoxifen already plays a major role in reducing the risk of death from breast cancer. But a new study suggests that women should be taking the drug for twice as long as is now customary, a finding that could upend the standard that has been in place for about 15 years. More

Trying to close orphanages where many aren't orphans at all. PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Orphanages packed with little ones dot the landscape here, some with brightly colored signs outside their gates, others unmarked on back roads. But many of the children are not actually orphans, and a campaign is under.... More

Tax deduction limits may trim deficits, but not easily. Behind President Obama’s insistence that tax rates must rise on higher incomes is a belief that Republicans cannot raise as much revenue as they claim, $800 billion in the first decade, simply by limiting deductions and loopholes. More

Credit card safety at 30,000 feet. Maybe it was the Bloody Mary that got Jean Shanley into trouble on a recent flight from Louisville to Las Vegas. She paid for the $5 beverage with her American Express card and then slipped the card back into her pocketbook, where it stayed for.... More

Fiscal cliff maneuvers are all about the holidays. Watching the events of the past few weeks, you could have gotten the idea that the United States is not only going to slip from the "fiscal cliff" but jump lemming-like off it. More

School districts in five states will lengthen their calendars. The school day and year are about to get longer in 10 school districts in five states, where schools will add up to 300 hours to their calendars starting next fall. More

Behind a call that kept nursing home patients in storm's path. Hurricane Sandy was swirling northward, four days before landfall, and at the Sea Crest Health Care Center, a nursing home overlooking the Coney Island Boardwalk in Brooklyn, workers were gathering medicines and other supplies as they prepared.... More

Study bolsters link between routine hits and brain disease. The growing evidence of a link between head trauma and long-term, degenerative brain disease was amplified in an extensive study of athletes, military veterans and others who absorbed repeated hits to the head, according to new findings.... More

New households sign economy is resurging. After graduating from UC Berkeley two years ago, Karen Rogers lived in a six-person group house in Berkeley while she stashed away cash to get her own place. More

Companies push for tax break on foreign profits. Amid the tumult over looming tax hikes and spending cuts, a massive change to the corporate tax code is quietly gathering steam. More

Saying no to college. BENJAMIN GOERING does not look like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, talk like him or inspire the same controversy. But he does apparently think like him. More

Taking a stand for office ergonomics. The health studies that conclude that people should sit less, and get up and move around more, have always struck me as fitting into the “well, duh” category. More

Mortgage catch pushes widows into foreclosure. Geraldine Bates lost her husband to kidney failure last year. Now, she has fallen behind on her mortgage payments and is terrified that she will lose her home in Jacksonville, Fla. More

American Crystal standoff goes to a fourth vote. Union workers will decide Saturday to accept a contract offer that would end one of the longest labor stoppages in recent Minnesota history. More

Aid changes raise issue of diversity at colleges. College and university endowments have recovered most of the losses they sustained during the recession, now that the economy has begun to grow. Yet as this year’s high school seniors begin to fill out applications and aid forms, a number of.... More

Hospital war reflects a bind for doctors in the U.S. For decades, doctors in picturesque Boise, Idaho, were part of a tight-knit community, freely referring patients to the specialists or hospitals of their choice and exchanging information about the latest medical treatments. More

Small employers weigh impact of providing health insurance. Like many franchisees, Robert U. Mayfield, who owns five Dairy Queens in and around Austin, Tex., is always eager to expand and — no surprise — has had his eyes on opening a sixth DQ. But he said concerns about the new federal health care.... More

Retail frenzy: prices on the Web change hourly. The day before Thanksgiving, Amazon was offering a discounted price of $49.96 on a popular Xbox game, the same price as Walmart and 3 cents lower than Target. Then the holiday pricing shuffle began. More

California health insurance rates could shoot up. California health insurers are proposing double-digit rate increases for hundreds of thousands of policyholders, drawing criticism that health insurers are padding their profits as the nation prepares to carry out the federal health care law. More

Obama makes fresh demands on fiscal cliff; Republicans reject them. President Obama offered Republicans a detailed plan Thursday for averting the year-end “fiscal cliff” that calls for $1.6 trillion in new taxes, $50 billion in fresh spending on the economy and an effective end to congressional control over.... More

Panel approves a bill to safeguard e-mail. The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a bill that would strengthen privacy protection for e-mails by requiring law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant from a judge in most cases before gaining access to messages in.... More

Under one roof, building for extended families. Tom and Kristin Moser’s new house — nearly 3,000 square feet in a development outside Tucson — has all the modern amenities, including solar panels and an open kitchen. But their house also has a feature that the builders are betting will.... More

Complaints aside, most face lower tax burden than in 1980. BELLEVILLE, Ill. — Alan Hicks divides long days between the insurance business he started in the late 1970s and the barbecue restaurant he opened with his sons three years ago. More

The world's most and least emotional countries. Since 2009, the Gallup polling firm has surveyed people in 150 countries and territories on, among other things, their daily emotional experience. Their survey asks five questions, meant to gauge whether the respondent felt significant positive.... More

Help for overscheduled teens. After just six hours of restless sleep, 17-year-old Cassidy Brewin gets up. She grabs a smoothie, coffee, a handful of dry cereal. With a quick kiss from her mom, she rushes off to class. More

Drive to unionize fast food workers begins. Fast-food workers at several restaurants in New York walked off the job on Thursday, firing the first salvo in what workplace experts say is the biggest effort to unionize fast-food workers ever undertaken in the United States. More

Medicare is faulted on shift to electronic records. The conversion to electronic medical records — a critical piece of the Obama administration’s plan for health care reform — is “vulnerable” to fraud and abuse because of the failure of Medicare officials to develop appropriate.... More

The autism advantage. When Thorkil Sonne and his wife, Annette, learned that their 3-year-old son, Lars, had autism, they did what any parent who has faith in reason and research would do: They started reading. At first they were relieved that so much was written on.... More

Studies find chemicals in furniture hard to avoid. Toxic flame retardants pervade the nation's households, especially California's, and little can be done to keep them out of our bodies, two new scientific studies find. More

Republican Senators introduce "Dream Act" alternative. After an election that bared the GOP’s huge disadvantages on immigration, three influential Republican senators have introduced legislation that would grant legal residency to young people brought illegally to the United States, if they seek.... More

Correcting heart rhythm opened door to a healthy new life. Marcus McCleery, the 372-pound version of him, had nothing to look forward to. Suffering from atrial fibrillation, an abnormally rapid beating of his heart that would leave him exhausted, he was so depressed that he did little more than sleep,.... More

China considers easing family planning rules. China is considering changes to its one-child policy, a former family planning official said, with government advisory bodies drafting proposals in the face of a rapidly ageing society in the world's most populous nation. More

California finds economic gloom starting to lift. After nearly five years of brutal economic decline, government retrenchment and a widespread loss of confidence in its future, California is showing the first signs of a rebound. There is evidence of job growth, economic stability, a resurgent.... More

Jeb Bush, with cash and clout, pushes contentious school reforms. In 1998, when Jeb Bush was elected governor, Florida kids scored far below the national average. By the end of his second term, in 2007, they were far ahead, with especially impressive gains for low-income and minority students. More

Silicon Valley's dirty secret: age bias. When Randy Adams, 60, was looking for a chief-executive officer job in Silicon Valley last year, he got turned down from position after position that he thought he was going to nail — only to see much younger, less-experienced men win out. More

Obama to meet executives, go to Pennsylvania for fiscal push. President Barack Obama will launch a multipronged push this week to garner support for his proposals to solve U.S. fiscal problems, meeting with business executives at the White House and visiting a small business in Pennsylvania to press his.... More

Thinking clearly about personality disorders. For years they have lived as orphans and outliers, a colony of misfit characters on their own island: the bizarre one and the needy one, the untrusting and the crooked, the grandiose and the cowardly. More

Efforts to curb entitlement spending face resistance. President Obama’s re-election and Democratic gains in Congress were supposed to make it easier for the party to strike a deal with Republicans to resolve the year-end fiscal crisis by providing new leverage. More

Disabled parents face bias, loss of kids, says report. In diverse and profound ways, the millions of Americans with disabilities have gained rights and opportunities since Congress passed landmark legislation on their behalf in 1990. Advocates say barriers and bias still abound, however, when it.... More

Consumers will spend less if middle-class taxes go up, says White House.... A White House report says that if that Congress allows taxes to go up on middle-class families, consumers will spend $200 billion less in 2013. More

Courts divided over searches of cellphones. Judges and lawmakers across the country are wrangling over whether and when law enforcement authorities can peer into suspects’ cellphones, and the cornucopia of evidence they provide. More

After dozens of deaths, inquiry into side bed rails. In November 2006, when Clara Marshall began suffering from the effects of dementia, her family moved her into the Waterford at Fairway Village, an assisted living home in Vancouver, Wash. More

Aiding the doctor who feels cancer's toll. The woman was terminally ill with advanced cancer, and the oncologist who had been treating her for three years thought the next step might be to deliver chemotherapy directly to her brain. It was a risky treatment that he knew would not, could.... More

More confident shoppers return to spending. Consumers are mounting a comeback, even as the recession has made them thriftier and more thoughtful about spending money. This year's holiday shopping season got underway this weekend with consumer confidence at a five-year high, according to.... More

Skills don't pay the bills. Earlier this month, hoping to understand the future of the moribund manufacturing job market, I visited the engineering technology program at Queensborough Community College in New York City. I knew that advanced manufacturing had become.... More

A red state-blue state secession plan. We in the blue states hear from the talking heads on Fox News and MSNBC that many of you in the red states are so distressed about the outcome of the elections that you would like to secede from the Union. More

Firms in a race to treat high blood pressure. With more than a billion people suffering from hypertension worldwide, companies large and small, from Minnesota to Ireland, are racing to develop devices that treat drug-resistant high blood pressure. More

4D scan shows fetuses yawn in the womb. Growing into a fully formed human being is a long process, and scientists have found that unborn babies not only hiccup, swallow and stretch in the womb, they yawn too. More

Dealing with doctors who take only cash. A FEW weeks ago, my wife and I were at our wits’ end: our 4-month-old daughter wouldn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time at night. We had consulted books and seen our pediatrician, but nothing was working. So my wife called a pediatrician who specializes in babies who struggle with sleep.... More

Scientists see promise in deep learning programs. Using an artificial intelligence technique inspired by theories about how the brain recognizes patterns, technology companies are reporting startling gains in fields as diverse as computer vision, speech recognition and the identification of.... More

Baby wanted: couples adopting through Craigslist. People go to Craiglist to find a job, buy a used couch, hire a plumber—and now they’re visiting the online marketplace to adopt a baby. A reporter at Yahoo Shine followed the increasing number of couples who are using social media to.... More

Economists, Obama administration at odds over role of mortgage debt in.... One year and one month before President Obama won reelection, he invited seven of the world’s top economists to a private meeting in the Oval Office to hear their advice on what do to fix the ailing economy. “I’m not asking you to.... More

Early start to "Black Friday" shopping frenzy. The shopping frenzy known as "Black Friday" kicked off at a more civilized hour, with shoppers welcoming decisions by retailers such as Target Corp and Toys R Us Inc to move their openings to Thursday night. More

The shrewd shopper carries a smartphone Retailers are trying to lure shoppers away from the Internet, where they have increasingly been shopping to avoid Black Friday madness, and back to the stores. More

Seeking ways to raise taxes but leave tax rate as is. Congressional negotiators, trying to avert a fiscal crisis in January, are examining ideas that would allow effective tax rates to rise for the wealthy without technically raising the top tax rate of 35 percent. They hope the proposals will.... More

Mammograms leading to unnecessary treatment, study finds. The routine use of mammograms has led to more than 1 million women being unnecessarily treated for breast cancer over the past three decades, according to the latest scientific report to cast skepticism on the effectiveness of the test. More

When phones come out long before the turkey. Caleb J. Spivak will be busier with his phone than his fork this Thanksgiving. Mr. Spivak, 23, is spending the holiday with his boyfriend’s family in Kennesaw, Ga. More

Oversight failures are documented in meningitis outbreak. Newly released documents add vivid detail to the emerging portrait of the Food and Drug Administration’s ineffective and halting efforts to regulate a Massachusetts company implicated in a national meningitis outbreak that has sickened nearly.... More

Don't ask? Internet still tells. Search engines have long provided clues to the topics people look up. But now sites like Google and Bing are showing the precise questions that are most frequently asked. More

Holiday shopping marathon starts as consumer sentiment remains shaky. Forget that Turkey trot. Thanksgiving is now the start of the annual holiday shopping endurance race, as more stores open on Thursday's national holiday to seek a bigger share of spending that is expected to grow slowly this season. More

Health-care law's next challenge: most don't understand it. After surviving a Supreme Court decision and a presidential election, the Obama administration’s health-care law faces another challenge: a public largely unaware of major changes that will roll out in the coming months. More

Food banks alarmed as drought dents government supplies. The worst U.S. drought in more than half a century has weakened the safety net for the 50 million Americans who struggle to get enough to eat, and the nation's food banks are raising the alarm as the holiday season gets into full swing. More

Fewer seek U.S. jobless aid; storm distorts data. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell sharply to a seasonally adjusted 410,000 last week, though the figure was elevated for the second straight week by Superstorm Sandy. More

Airlines on-time performance rises. Next time you dawdle at the duty-free store or an airport bar, thinking you have a few more minutes until your flight is set to go, know this: the plane’s doors might have already closed. More

In birthplace of Thanksgiving, blue laws keep stores from opening. PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Here in the birthplace of Thanksgiving, where the Pilgrims first gave thanks in 1621 for their harvest and their survival, some residents are giving thanks this year for something else: the Colonial-era blue laws that.... More

Housing starts hit four-year high in October. Housing starts rose to their highest rate in more than four years in October, suggesting the housing market recovery was gaining steam, even though permits for future construction fell. More

Some cities find small steps key to storm protection. In the aftermath of the historic floods caused by Superstorm Sandy, some city leaders have begun to argue for the construction of sea walls capable of shielding the U.S. coastline from ever more intense storms. More

College of future could be come one come all. Teaching Introduction to Sociology is almost second nature to Mitchell Duneier, a professor at Princeton: he has taught it 30 times, and a textbook he co-wrote is in its eighth edition. But last summer, as he transformed the class into a free.... More

Storm victims, in cleanup, face rise in injuries and illness. Day and night, victims of Hurricane Sandy have been streaming into ad hoc emergency rooms and relief centers, like the MASH-type medical unit on an athletic field in Long Beach, and the warming tent in the Rockaways the size of a small high.... More

Tax talks raise bar for richest Americans. By most measures, the personal finances of Anne Zimmerman, a small-business owner in Cincinnati, have little in common with those of Oracle’s chief executive, Lawrence J. Ellison. More

Immigrant, minority groups skeptical about Republican outreach. Latinos, African-Americans and other minorities who helped President Barack Obama win a second term are skeptical about enhanced Republican outreach to their communities, but also say the future of the coalition that shaped the 2012 election may be fragile. More

Stock futures up on optimism over budget talks. Stock index futures started a holiday-shortened week higher on Monday, with signs of progress in Washington talks to resolve the fiscal crunch lifting investors' mood. More

Investors rush to beat the threat of higher taxes. Business owners and investors are rapidly maneuvering to shield themselves from the prospect of higher taxes next year, a strategy that is sending ripples across Wall Street and broad areas of the economy. More

Fear and anxiety amid move to raze damaged homes. Civi Blitman, 70, was at home in the Rockaways the night Hurricane Sandy sent a wave of seawater crashing over her house, shearing off most of its front half. More

Muscular body image lures boys into obsession. It is not just girls these days who are consumed by an unattainable body image. Take David Abusheikh. At age 15, he started lifting weights for two hours a day, six days a week. More

Obama, Republicans, lobbyists and voters all have erected hurdles to.... To reach a deal that staves off an avalanche of tax increases and deep cuts in government programs, the players will have to resolve deep political and fiscal disagreements that have stymied them time after time despite repeated promises to.... More

Big box retailers take on the Internet. Big-box retailers are confronting their Internet competition head-on this holiday season. As the peak shopping period kicks off this week, Target and Best Buy will be leading the charge against Amazon and other Internet rivals by matching.... More

The hazards of growing up painlessly. The girl who feels no pain was in the kitchen, stirring ramen noodles, when the spoon slipped from her hand and dropped into the pot of boiling water. It was a school night; the TV was on in the living room, and her mother was folding clothes.... More

New York City to demolish hundreds of homes. New York City is moving to demolish hundreds of homes in the neighborhoods hit hardest by Hurricane Sandy, after a grim assessment of the storm-ravaged coast revealed that many structures were so damaged they pose a danger to public safety and.... More

App boom lures creators, but can they make money? Shawn and Stephanie Grimes spent much of the last two years pursuing their dream of doing research and development for Apple, the world’s most successful corporation. But they did not actually have jobs at Apple. More

No more co-pays for birth control. Andrea Cecconi had grown accustomed to paying $50 a month for birth control pills. It was not an unmanageable sum -- but at age 32, with a car payment and student debt to pay off, she watches every dollar. More

Companies going surgery shopping. Carol and Ed Vogel enjoyed a week-long all-expenses-paid trip to a Newport Beach resort last month, and they're scheduled to return in a couple of weeks. More

A eulogy for the humble Hostess Twinkie. Twinkies, the unpretentious, freakishly versatile and seemingly indestructible snack pastry dubbed “the cream puff of the proletariat,” died Friday of complications from economic reality. Texas-based Hostess Brands announced it would.... More

Lack of electricians delays New York recovery from Sandy. It has become one of the biggest sources of tension between residents and the authorities in the worst-hit areas of New York City after Superstorm Sandy: damaged electrical systems in homes and - making matters worse - not enough electricians.... More

Drug shortages persist in U.S., harming care. Paul Davis, the chief of a rural ambulance squad in southern Ohio, was down to his last vial of morphine earlier this fall when a woman with a broken leg needed a ride to the hospital. More

Walmart and Target: a tale of two discounters. This holiday season, the biggest discount chains in the U.S. will tell the tale of two very different shoppers: those that have and those that have not. More

Will Hostess, maker of Twinkies, Wonder Bread, go out of business? Hostess Brands Inc. said it likely won’t make an announcement until Friday morning on whether it will move to liquidate its business, after the company had set a Thursday deadline for striking employees to return to work. More

Affirmative action ban in Michigan is rejected by court. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled, 8 to 7, on Thursday that Michigan’s voter-approved 2006 ban on affirmative action was unconstitutional. More

School districts brace for cuts as fiscal crisis looms. During the campaign, both President Obama and Mitt Romney repeatedly extolled the value of schools and teachers. Mr. Romney, in their first debate last month, even vowed, “I’m not going to cut education funding.” More

For Alzheimer's, ability to detect far outpaces treatment advances. When Awilda Jimenez started forgetting things last year, her husband, Edwin, felt a shiver of dread. Her mother had developed Alzheimer’s in her 50s. Could his wife, 61, have it, too? More

Obama signals he's putting climate change on back burner. The fact that climate change got some attention at Wednesday’s presidential press conference could be viewed as progress by environmentalists, after they watched the issue go virtually ignored during the just-concluded campaign. More

Texas Instruments cuts 1,700 jobs. Texas Instruments is eliminating 1,700 jobs, as it winds down its mobile processor business to focus on chips for more profitable markets like cars and home appliances. More

Jobless claims surge in wake of superstorm Sandy. The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits surged last week to a 1 1/2-year high, a sign superstorm Sandy had dented the economy by leaving tens of thousands of people out of work. More

Lyme disease recurrence due to new infection, not relapse, says study. When people who have been treated for Lyme disease recover but later come down with its symptoms again, is the illness a relapse or a new infection? More

Health law has states feeling tense over deadline. The days since President Obama won re-election have been marked by tension and angst in Republican-led states like Iowa, where Gov. Terry Branstad has waited until the last minute to decide whether to create a crucial tool for people to get.... More

Workers unite and strike across Europe, protesting austerity, layoffs. BRUSSELS — Workers across the European Union sought to present a united front against rampant unemployment and government spending cuts Wednesday with a string of strikes and demonstrations across the region. More

Obama to open talks with $1.6 trillion plan to raise taxes on corporations.... President Obama is taking a hard line with congressional Republicans heading into negotiations over the year-end fiscal cliff, making no opening concessions and calling for far more in new taxes than Republicans have so far been willing to.... More

Can housework help you live longer? It’s well known by now that active people typically live longer than those who are sedentary. But precisely what types or amounts of exercise most affect life span has not been clear. More

Opting out of parenthood, with finances in mind. Most people want to be sure that they can buy and pay for a home, save up for an emergency fund and enjoy a comfortable retirement. They will go to great lengths to meet those goals, and they make life choices accordingly. More

On the new shopping list: milk, bread, eggs and a mortgage. On a recent shopping trip to Costco, Lilly Neubauer picked up paper towels, lentils, carrots — and a home mortgage. More

Special report: how a vicious circle of self-interest sank a California.... When this sun-drenched exurb east of Los Angeles filed for bankruptcy protection in August, the city attorney suggested fraudulent accounting was the root of the problem. More

Alzheimer's precursors evident in brain at early age. Studies published this month in the journal Lancet Neurology, found that the brains of people destined to develop Alzheimer’s clearly show changes at least 20 years before they have any cognitive impairment. More

Facebook's false faces undermine its credibility The Facebook page for Gaston Memorial Hospital, in Gastonia, N.C., offers a chicken salad recipe to encourage healthy eating, tips on avoiding injuries at Zumba class, and pictures of staff members dressed up at Halloween. Typical stuff for a.... More

Flood insurance, already fragile, faces new stress. The federal government’s flood insurance program, which fell $18 billion into debt after Hurricane Katrina, is once again at risk of running out of money as the daunting reconstruction from Hurricane Sandy gets under way. More

Push expands for legalizing same-sex marriage. PORTLAND, Me. — Elated by their first ballot victories, in four states, advocates of same-sex marriage rights plan to push legislatures in half a dozen more states toward legalization as they also press their cause in federal courts. More

Ohio childcare costs, more affordable than 39 states, rival college.... Annual costs for infant day care in Ohio rival tuition at four-year state colleges, and rising expenses continue to strain family budgets which can result in parents placing their children in lower-quality care, a Dayton Daily News analysis.... More

Disabled vets face tough job market. For Jeremiah Gaches, walking out his front door seemed like too much most days, let alone holding a job. A retired Army sergeant, Gaches was struggling in civilian life with the effects of a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress.... More

Toyota builds cars that communicate with each other. Toyota Motor Corp. is testing car safety systems that allow vehicles to communicate with each other and with the roads they are on in a just completed facility in Japan the size of three baseball stadiums. More

Federal health care law: now it's full speed ahead. With President Obama's victory in hand, it's full steam ahead on implementing the federal health care law. States face a Friday deadline to say whether they'll build their own heath insurance exchanges in 2014, or else live with a version being.... More

Houston daycare fire trial to soon reach jury. A jury in Houston will soon consider the fate of a woman charged with murder after four children died in a fire at her home day care in February 2011. More

Child's education, but parents' crushing loans. It has been six years since Michele Fitzgerald — broke, unemployed and in default on the $18,000 in loans she took out for Jenni’s college education — became a boomerang mom, moving into her daughter’s townhouse apartment in Hingham,.... More

Unlikely allies behind marijuana votes in Washington, Colorado. Weed is now a winner. The politics of marijuana legalization have gone from the fringes to the mainstream, catching opponents off guard and even startling some proponents with their own success. More

Domestic violence reports rise in San Francisco. Reports of domestic violence in San Francisco rose sharply from mid-2010 to mid-2011 - including a remarkable 47 percent increase in phone calls to domestic violence crisis lines, according to a draft report on family violence prepared by the.... More

Tips to help regain homework sanity for your family Roger Wilkerson, founder of Homework Sanity Inc., calls himself "the only tutor that fires parents" and considers his work with students to be a success when they no longer need his services. More

Weighing dangers of cold classrooms against risks of missing class. The past few mornings, parents at a few dozen New York City schools gave their children an especially warm send-off. Rachel Leinweber sent her son with thin gloves that he could type with on school computers. Abbey Seiden packed her daughter.... More

How to bridge the hiring gap. MANY newly minted college graduates are filled with anxiety, fearing that they won’t find decent jobs despite their knowledge and skills, and that they will never be free of tuition debt. At the same time, executives say they can’t find.... More

Supreme Court agrees to take a look at voting rights law. The Supreme Court will consider eliminating the government's most potent weapon against racial discrimination at polling places since the 1960s. The court acted three days after a diverse coalition of voters propelled President Barack Obama to.... More

Superstorm Sandy will raise used car prices nationwide. The estimated 250,000 cars flooded by Superstorm Sandy on the East Coast will drive up used-car prices, even as far away as California. More

New Jersey shore struggles to come back. The residents of Sea Bright returned home Friday, some for the first time since Superstorm Sandy, and attempted to salvage what they could from apartments and houses still inundated with sand and salty water. More

Wall Street to Washington: Time to compromise on fiscal cliff. Investors are looking for a compromise to keep the U.S. economy from sailing over the fiscal cliff. It's just not clear that the politicians in Washington are ready to deliver one. More

Christian right failed to sway voters on issues. Christian conservatives, for more than two decades a pivotal force in American politics, are grappling with Election Day results that repudiated their influence and suggested that the cultural tide — especially on gay issues — has shifted.... More

Patent Office says telework withstood Sandy. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, one of the most avid users of telework among federal agencies, says its productivity largely held up when agencies in the Washington area were closed for two days because of Hurricane Sandy. More

Mexico says marijuana legalization in U.S. could change anti-drug.... The decision by voters in Colorado and Washington state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana has left Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto and his team scrambling to reformulate their anti-drug strategies in light of what one.... More

Washington voters narrowly approve gay marriage, after similar measures.... Washington state has approved gay marriage, joining Maine and Maryland as the first states to pass same-sex marriage by popular vote. More

Penney's has big loss on steep sales decline. J.C. Penney Co. reported a bigger-than-expected loss in the third quarter on plummeting sales as customers continue to reject its move get rid of blockbuster sales in favor of everyday low pricing. More

Boehner says Obamacare is law of the land. Top Republican lawmaker John Boehner said on Thursday he would not make it his mission to repeal the Obama administration's healthcare reform law following the re-election of President Barack Obama. More

Gap widening between whites and blacks in heart attack deaths. Black men and women are twice as likely to die from coronary heart disease as white men and women, according to a study led by University of Alabama doctors. More

Sandy to drive up prices of used cars. Expect used car prices to rise nationally because of superstorm Sandy. The storm destroyed about 250,000 used vehicles on the East Coast, and maybe more, according to estimates by the National Automobile Dealers Association. More

Marriage equality takes four steps forward. Election night four years ago was one bittersweet affair for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans. They swooned over the history-making election of then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as the nation’s first black president. But.... More

Four more years in the White House for Sasha and Malia. When her father’s second term as president is up, Malia Obama will be 18 years old and entering into adulthood. She and her younger sister, Sasha, will have spent their formative years in the White House, a place that their parents have.... More

Many students return to classroom at strange schools, strange places. It had only been a week and a half, but for students and teachers in New York City’s most devastated areas, it might as well have been a whole summer. More

A record 20 women will serve in the U.S. Senate. The election on Tuesday of five new women to the U.S. Senate, four of them Democrats, will bring to 20 the number of “Gentle ladies” in Congress’ upper chamber. More

Boehner says he'll consider tax increases. WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker John Boehner offered Wednesday to pursue a deal with a victorious President Barack Obama that will include higher taxes "under the right conditions" to help reduce the nation's staggering debt and put its.... More

Social media finds a home in murder case. When Mark O’Mara agreed to defend George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin murder case, one of his first major decisions was to embrace the Internet. More

A big leap for marriage equality Progress on civil rights can occur in bursts. The nation’s march toward full equality for all Americans took an important step forward on Election Day with a string of groundbreaking victories for same-sex marriage across the country. More

Obama wins clear victory, but balance of power is unchanged. After $6 billion, two dozen presidential primary election days, a pair of national conventions, four general election debates, hundreds of Congressional contests and more television advertisements than anyone would ever want to watch, the two.... More

Suzuki to end car sales in U.S., focus on motorcycles. Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp will pull the plug on its unprofitable automobile sales business in the United States after nearly three decades, hurt by a strong yen and a limited choice of vehicles that failed to excite consumers. More

Vitamins get thumbs down in helping men prevent heart disease. Multivitamins might help lower the risk for cancer in healthy older men but do not affect their chances of developing heart disease, new research suggests. More

Chasing clues to detect outbreak. The e-mail Dr. Marion A. Kainer received on Sept. 18 suggested an investigation of a case of fungal meningitis and stroke in a man whose immune system was normal and whose only risk for the infection was a spinal injection of a steroid. More

New cholesterol-lowering drugs show promise. A new class of powerful cholesterol-reducing drugs is showing promising results, potentially offering a new option for people who do not respond to medication now on the market, according to studies presented at a conference of heart.... More

State by state, battle for presidency goes to voters. The most expensive presidential race in American history now becomes the biggest show on television, a night with enough uncertainty that it could become a telethon lasting well into morning. More

In New York, students head back to school while transit remains hobbled. Students were told to dress warmly as they trickled back to chilly classrooms on Monday, and many trains and buses were rolling again. But a week after Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the region the return to work and school was still a.... More

United passengers praise new 787 Dreamliner. In a trip years in the making, United Airlines passengers Sunday got their first chance to experience the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which made its inaugural voyage for the airline on a scheduled flight from Houston to Chicago. More

Foster kids praise adoption program. Teenager Bobby Noreen had been in Twin Cities foster homes for about five years before being adopted at age 14 in February 2008. Now 18, he has graduated from Pine City High School, landed his first job and is a freshman at Pine Technical.... More

How brain-training can improve your memory. As many people hit middle age, they often start to notice that their memory and mental clarity are not what they used to be. We suddenly can't remember where we put the keys just a moment ago, or an old acquaintance's name, or the name of an.... More

Sandy-afflicted areas seek shelter for thousands of homeless. With power slowly returning to New York and New Jersey and emergency fuel being rushed into the region, authorities turned Sunday to a potentially bigger problem since super storm Sandy: where to house the tens of thousands of people whose.... More

Middle class faces fiscal cliff in form of alternative minimum tax. The best hope for a deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff” may lie with the alternative minimum tax, an obscure provision of the tax code that is about to become alarmingly relevant to millions of middle-class taxpayers. More

Lights in Manhattan, despair elsewhere The patchy recovery from Hurricane Sandy exposed a fractured region on Saturday: The lights flickered on in Manhattan neighborhoods that had been dark for days and the city’s subways rumbled and screeched through East River tunnels again. More

After Sandy, more openness for remote work? While it’s hard to see much of a silver lining amid the wreckage, one positive outcome could emerge: The storm’s disruption could increase leaders’ willingness to let more people work remotely. More

The politics of Friday's jobs report. There have been 45 monthly employment reports since Barack Obama was inaugurated president. Number 46 will be the biggest of them all. Not in terms of significance for what it tells us about the economy; on that score, every report is about the.... More

Estimate of economic losses now up to $50 billion. Economic damages inflicted by Hurricane Sandy could reach $50 billion, according to new estimates that are more than double a previous forecast. Some economists warned on Thursday that the storm could shave a half percentage point off the.... More

Gasoline runs short, adding woes to storm recovery. UNION, N.J. — Widespread gas shortages stirred fears among residents and disrupted some rescue and emergency services on Thursday as the New York region struggled to return to a semblance of normalcy after being ravaged by Hurricane Sandy. More

Asian-Americans in the argument. A COLLEGE education aims to guide students through unfamiliar territory — Arabic, Dante, organic chemistry — so what was once alien comes to feel a lot less so. But sometimes an issue starts so close to home that the educational goal is the.... More

New Jersey reels from storm's thrashing. New Jersey was reeling on Wednesday from the impact of Hurricane Sandy, which has caused catastrophic flooding here in Hoboken and in other New York City suburbs, destroyed entire neighborhoods across the state and wiped out iconic boardwalks.... More

Health insurers ready post-election message: We're not the bad guys! Health insurance lobbyists are gearing up for post-election trips to Capitol Hill and they are armed with….charts. Lots and lots of charts. More

The teenage bedroom as battleground. KRISTYNA KRUEGER took a deep breath, girding herself to enter her 14-year-old son Brandon’s bedroom. Then she gingerly stepped in and described the spectacle. More

A new kind of tutoring aims to make students smarter. IN the back room of a suburban storefront previously occupied by a yoga studio, Nick Vecchiarello, a 16-year-old from Glen Ridge, N.J., sits at a desk across from Kathryn Duch, a recent college graduate who wears a black shirt emblazoned with.... More

Ex-gay men fight back against view that homosexuality can't be changed. For most of his life, Blake Smith said, “every inch of my body craved male sexual contact.” Mr. Smith, 58, who says he believes homosexual behavior is wrong on religious grounds, tried to tough it out. More

Tackling bullying, one pigtail at a time. One of Maisie Kate Miller’s schoolmates always had something belittling to say — about her body, her boyfriend, her fashion choices. But that last little dig, no big deal in itself, brought the 15-year-old sophomore at Marblehead High,.... More

In hurricane, Twitter proves a lifeline, despite pranksters. As Hurricane Sandy pounded the U.S. Atlantic coast on Monday night, knocking out electricity and Internet connections, millions of residents turned to Twitter as a part-newswire, part-911 hotline that hummed through the night even as some.... More

Medical innovators target cancer, headaches. The best medical innovations for next year include an almond-size device that's implanted in the mouth to relieve severe headaches and a hand-held scanner resembling a blow dryer that detects skin cancer, the Cleveland Clinic said on Wednesday. More

After storm, businesses try to keep moving. For John Selldorff, the best news of the day was that his employees were safe and the power was back on at his company’s factory in Fairfield, N.J. But all around the plant, electricity and phone service were still out — and the manager.... More

Oklahomans prepare for new law that will make guns a common sight. Bryan Hull will soon strap his Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver to his hip and meet his armed friends at Beverly’s Pancake House here. They have no interest in the cash register. They just want a late-night breakfast. More

What scares employees most? According to a recent survey by specialized temporary staffing company Accountemps, more than 28 percent of respondents in a recent survey* indicated making a mistake at work was their greatest fear. More

What's dragging down the U.S. economy? More than three years after the recovery began — in name, at least — the economy is still in a giant hole. But what, precisely, is still dragging it down? What sectors are the culprits? A simple model delivers some answers. More

Scientists move closer to a long-lasting flu vaccine. As this year's flu season gathers steam, doctors and pharmacists have a fresh stock of vaccines to offer their patients. The vaccines usually provide strong protection against the virus, but only for a while. Vaccines for other diseases.... More

Killing the computer to save it. MENLO PARK, Calif. — Many people cite Albert Einstein’s aphorism “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Only a handful, however, have had the opportunity to discuss the concept with the physicist over.... More

Storm barrels through region, leaving destructive path. Hurricane Sandy battered the mid-Atlantic region on Monday, its powerful gusts and storm surges causing once-in-a-generation flooding in coastal communities, knocking down trees and power lines and leaving more than five million people —.... More

Should you friend your boss on facebook? In a sign of our changing times, a forthcoming white paper out of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton school bears the title, “OMG My Boss Just Friended Me.” The study will add to the small but growing body of academic research into.... More

Employees to face healthcare sticker shock. Visit to New York City orthopedist: $223. One X-ray: $50. One follow-up magnetic resonance imaging test: $766. Total bill for checking out that aching shoulder: $1,039 - all to be paid by the patient, rather than the insurer. More

There's homework to do on school lunches. Nutritionists and health-conscious parents applauded when last year the Department of Agriculture finally set new standards for the nation’s school lunches in an effort to foster good health and counter the epidemic of obesity afflicting.... More

Silos loom as death traps on American farms. STERLING, Mich. — Tommy Osier, 18, a popular but indifferent student, was still a year from graduating from high school, and that was no sure thing. Farm work paid him $7.40 an hour, taught him discipline and gave him new skills. He had begun.... More

Storm gains strength as it churns north. Hurricane Sandy grew stronger before dawn on Monday as it churned northward through the Atlantic Ocean en route to what forecasters agreed would be a devastating landfall, possibly within 100 miles of New York City. More

The work-life debate we should be having. Throughout this campaign, the candidates have talked endlessly about the economy and how to create jobs. But we’ve barely started the conversation we should be having about how those jobs can fit better into our increasingly busy lives. More

U.S. set to sponsor health insurance. The Obama administration will soon take on a new role as the sponsor of at least two nationwide health insurance plans to be operated under contract with the federal government and offered to consumers in every state. More

Urgent warnings as hurricane Sandy heads to Northeast. More than 50 million people from the mid-Atlantic to New England braced Saturday for a potentially massive storm, as Hurricane Sandy churned northward on a collision course with another storm system that is sweeping in from the west. More

Pentagon reopens program allowing immigrants with special skills to enlist. Thousands of immigrants were so eager to enlist in the American military during the last two years, despite the strong odds that they could be sent to combat zones, that they signed a petition on Facebook asking the Pentagon to let them join. More

A part-time life, as hours shrink and shift. SPRING VALLEY, Calif. — Since the Fresh & Easy grocery chain was founded five years ago, it has opened 150 stores in California and positioned itself as a hip, socially responsible company. More

Young adults, back on the move. Their lives on hold for years, young adults are now making big moves in the fledgling economic recovery, leaving college towns or parents' homes and heading out of state at the highest rate since the height of the housing boom. More

CEOs trade barbs as tablet wars heat up. The biggest names in consumer technology, stung by a string of disappointing quarterly results this month, are suiting up for what's shaping to be the fiercest holiday battle in years. More

Hurricane Sandy drenches Bahamas, leaves 21 dead in Caribbean. Hurricane Sandy pounded the Bahamas with battering winds and rain on Friday, sweeping over the island chain after killing 21 people across the Caribbean and posing a menacing threat to the U.S. East Coast. More

Consumers boost growth despite business caution. Economic growth picked up in the third quarter as a late burst in consumer spending offset the first cutbacks in investment in more than a year by cautious businesses. More

Why women can't do pullups. While the pull-up has been used by everyone from middle-school gym teachers to Marine drill instructors to measure fitness, the fact is that many fit people, particularly women, can’t do even one. More

Spending on Medicaid has slowed, survey finds. The annual growth in spending on Medicaid slowed sharply last year as the economy began to improve, a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found. Enrollment in the program grew only modestly as well, but that may change as millions of people.... More

No job? Get online. Dann Diaz was unemployed for the second time in as many years, a victim twice over of corporate sales and downsizing. For four months, he rewrote his résumé almost daily, submitting it to postings from large online job listings. No luck. Then.... More

At Afghan shrine, ancient treatment for mental illness. JALALABAD, Afghanistan — No one here knows the man whose left leg is shackled to the wall of cell No. 5. Last week, he finished tearing his mattress to shreds and then moved onto his clothes, ripping his shirt and pants off before falling.... More

Jobless claims fall, give clearer sign of health. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, giving a clearer sign that the labor market is healing after wild fluctuations in claims data at the beginning of the month. More

Court's split decision provides little clarity on surrogacy. Unable to conceive, the New Jersey couple did what an increasing number of 21st-century parents have done: they got an egg from an anonymous donor, and made an agreement with another woman to carry the child for them. More

New laws add a divisive component to breast screening. In a move that has irked medical groups and delighted patient advocates, states have begun passing laws requiring clinics that perform mammograms to tell patients whether they have something that many women have never even heard of: dense.... More

Apple unwraps mini-pad to take on Amazon, Google. Apple Inc will begin to sell an 8-inch version of the iPad on Friday to compete with Amazon.com Inc's Kindle and other smaller tablets, but it set a higher-than-expected price tag of $329 that Wall Street fears could curb demand. More

Young immigrants cautiously come out of the shadows. Carlos Roa celebrated this summer when the Obama administration announced a new program to defer deportation for young undocumented immigrants. But two months into the program, the 25-year-old activist has yet to apply. More

October factory activity edges up; growth still weak. Manufacturing improved slightly in October but slow growth and economic uncertainty suggested the sector's recent struggles may persist over the final months of 2012, an industry survey showed on Wednesday. More

A town's passion for football is a retired doctor's concern. The agenda for the Oct. 1 school board meeting did not call for anything particularly exciting. But during a segment called “Matters of Interest,” Paul Butler, a retired doctor and relative newcomer to the board, floated an idea: end the.... More

Safety becomes a concern with high caffeinated drinks. Among the latest entrants in the energy industry’s caffeine race is a pocket-size squeeze bottle called Mio Energy. Each half-teaspoon serving of Mio, which is sold by Kraft Foods, releases 60 milligrams of caffeine in a beverage, the amount.... More

Before meningitis outbreak, firm avoided sanctions. The pharmacy tied to a deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak escaped harsh punishment from health regulators several times in the years leading up to a deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak that has raised questions about oversight of the customized drug.... More

DuPont to cut 1,500 jobs as sales fall around the world. DuPont reported a lower-than-expected quarterly profit on Tuesday and announced 1,500 job cuts as part of a cost savings program designed to offset falling sales around the world. More

In mobile world, tech giants scramble to get up to speed. The ground is shifting beneath tech titans like Intel, Microsoft and Google because of a major force: the rise of mobile devices. More

Settlement eases rules for some Medicare patients. Tens of thousands of people with chronic conditions and disabilities may find it easier to qualify for Medicare coverage of potentially costly home health care, skilled nursing home stays and outpatient therapy under policy changes planned by.... More

Pee-wee concussions lead to penalties for adults. It took just one play on Sept. 15 to suggest the game between the Southbridge Pop Warner pee wees and their rivals, the Tantasqua Braves, could mean trouble. Two Tantasqua players were hit so hard that their coach pulled them off the field. More

More students defaulting on student loans. Student debt, which now exceeds credit card debt nationally, has become a flashpoint of financial frustration as overextended students struggle to pay the bill for their education. More

California gas consumers hurt by few suppliers, outages. For nearly two decades, Santosh Arya has pumped some of the San Diego area's cheapest gas at his three Homeland Petroleum stations. But his streak ended early this month, when wholesale prices started rising sharply, then shot up 40 cents a.... More

Most companies won't be early adopters of Windows 8. There was once a time when the launch of a new Windows operating system was a huge deal for the technology departments in many businesses. Not anymore. Microsoft Corp's release of Windows 8 on Friday is likely to be a non-event for most.... More

At technology high school, goal isn't to finish in four years. Flakes of green paint are peeling from the third-floor windowsills. Some desks are patched with tape, others etched with graffiti. The view across the street is of a row of boarded-up brownstones. More

Worried sick: Meningitis risk haunts 14,000. Cathy Literski could tell something was wrong just from her mother’s voice on the telephone. Her mother had learned that a steroid drug injected into her spine for back pain might have been contaminated with a fungus that could cause.... More

Rumors are Apple's secret weapon. On Tuesday, Apple will make an announcement that will probably shake the gadget world. Most Apple-watchers believe the company will release a miniature iPad. But Apple could introduce a MacBook Pro with a sharper screen. Or a more powerful Mac.... More

Commercial surrogacy grows in India. They never wanted to have a child, until they did. And then they couldn't. For four years, this San Carlos couple struggled with infertility. Now, their child is growing inside a woman they have never met, in India, a country they have never.... More

Planned Parenthood's funding is targeted in partisan debates. Oklahoma has been providing financial support to Planned Parenthood for nearly two decades, even though the state is among the most socially conservative in the nation. But that changed this month, when the state announced abruptly that it was.... More

No need to crowd in; we can all talk to Mom. People have long used webcams on their laptop and desktop computers to add live video to Internet calls. But the face-to-face chats often include grainy, low-resolution images and much crowding around the computer when the whole family wants to.... More

Clinic raffles could make you a winner, and maybe a mother. “That’s right, one lucky woman will win the ultimate chance at starting or building her family,” said a contest announcement issued in April by Long Island I.V.F., a clinic in Melville that offers in vitro fertilization to women who are.... More

Pay gap widens for federal workers, panel says. White-collar federal employees are underpaid on average by about 35 percent compared with the private sector, a widening of the “pay gap,” which stood at about 26 percent last year, an advisory group said Friday. More

Riding for life, perched on a cycle. Ben Winterer probably is the world's only athlete who prepares for grueling, two-day motorcycle competitions by drinking gallons of water and donning a vest that pummels his chest 25 times a second. More

Diabetes study ends early, with surprising results. A large federal study of whether diet and weight loss can prevent heart attacks and strokes in overweight and obese people with Type 2 diabetes has ended two years ahead of schedule because the intensive program did not help. More

Housecleaning, then dinner? Silicon Valley perks come home. Phil Libin, chief executive of Evernote, turned to his wife last year and asked if she had suggestions for how the software company might improve the lives of its employees and their families. His wife, who also works at Evernote, didn’t miss.... More

Boys now enter puberty younger, study suggests. A large study released by the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that boys are entering puberty earlier now than several decades ago — or at least earlier than the time frame doctors have historically used as a benchmark. More

Study finds flirting helps women get ahead at work. According to research from the University of California Berkeley and the London School of Economics, women stand to profit, literally, from a few winks. (We know: that sound you heard was the collective eyeroll of every woman alive who’s ever.... More

Tennessee clinic linked to meningitis scare closed after outbreak. The Tennessee clinic that received more potentially tainted steroid than any facility in the nation has been closed temporarily as it struggles to cope with an avalanche of patient calls about the deadly meningitis outbreak, its administrator.... More

Checking account fees rise; is it time to look for a new checking account? Quick. How much are you paying every month just to have a checking account? And for ATM Fees? If you’re not sure, it’s time to find out. Checking account fees have soared over the past year as banks try to boost profits. Depending on your.... More

Boy Scout files give glimpse into 20 years of sex abuse. Details of decades of sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America, and what child welfare experts say was a corrosive culture of secrecy that compounded the damage, were cast into full public view for the first time on Thursday with the release.... More

U.S. marriage act is unfair to gays, court panel says. A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that gay Americans are a class of people who deserve the same kinds of constitutional protections as many other victims of discrimination. More

Gun activists aim to buck state law on concealed weapons. In the only state that doesn’t let its residents walk around with concealed firearms, a northwest Illinois county could become the testing ground for gun enthusiasts who want a clean sweep for their Second Amendment rights. More

Apple loses copyright appeal against Samsung. Apple Inc lost its appeal of a ruling that its rival Samsung's Galaxy tablet computer did not copy Apple's registered tablet designs in a British court on Thursday. More

Multivitamin use linked to lowered cancer risk. After a series of conflicting reports about whether vitamin pills can stave off chronic disease, researchers announced on Wednesday that a large clinical trial of nearly 15,000 older male doctors followed for more than a decade found that those.... More

Lapses at big drug factories add to shortages and danger. Weevils floating in vials of heparin. Morphine cartridges that contain up to twice the labeled dose. Manufacturing plants with rusty tools, mold in production areas and — in one memorable case — a barrel of urine. More

Rising college costs pose test for Obama on education policies. In campaign stops across college campuses, and again in the debate on Tuesday, President Obama has promoted his efforts to make college more affordable. His record, more activist than any recent predecessor’s, includes greatly expanding the.... More

Addictive snack banned from schools. Forget good old-fashioned potato chips. These days America’s kids are munching on Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Maybe you’ve noticed kid stuffing their mouths with these fiery, cheesy nuggets. More

Prison crowding undermines safety, report says. In the company of killers, bank robbers and corrupt politicians, federal prisons might be a more interesting site than your average government workplace. More

Shortage of skilled labor may become critical. U.S. manufacturing industry executives have bemoaned a skills gap in the nation's workforce, but a new report says the shortfall isn't a big deal -- yet. More

Cholesterol is falling in adults, study finds. Cholesterol levels in adults are falling, and changes in the amount of trans fats in the American diet may be part of the reason, new research suggests. More

Less commuting, more Halloween candy. LAST year Tim Graham bought a business. In the process, he and his wife, Duval Hopkins Graham, acquired a car, a garage space and an E-ZPass. More

FDA: More drugs may be tied to meningitis outbreak. Federal regulators broadened their warning to doctors Monday, raising questions about the potential risk of infection from other injectable drugs made by the specialty pharmacy in Massachusetts linked to the burgeoning fungal-meningitis.... More

Europe calls for Google to be more transparent about data collection. Google’s efforts to track users across services such as YouTube and Gmail do not meet European standards of privacy, officials announced Tuesday, in the latest of a growing number of regulatory challenges for the American technology giant. More

After a childhood pouring refills, reaching beyond the past. Bridgette the waitress glides through morning at Donna’s Diner with an easy, familiar air, as though she were born somewhere between the cash register and the coffee maker. She is a constant, like pancakes on the menu. More

Seeking aid, school districts change teacher evaluations. In an exercise evoking a corporate motivation seminar, a group of public school teachers and principals clustered around posters scrawled with the titles of Beatles songs. More

Hospitals ditch formula samples to promote breast feeding. For years, virtually every new mother has been sent home from the hospital with a gift bag full of free product samples, including infant formula. More

A risky lifeline for the elderly is costing some their homes. The very loans that are supposed to help seniors stay in their homes are in many cases pushing them out. Reverse mortgages, which allow homeowners 62 and older to borrow money against the value of their homes and not pay it back until they move.... More

Retail sales point to stronger economic growth. Retail sales rose in September as Americans bought more of everything from cars to gasoline and electronics, pointing to stronger-than-expected economic growth in the third quarter. More

Flipping houses is once again a booming business. Not long ago, John Irvin was selling women’s shoes in the Nordstrom at the Pentagon City mall, pulling down about $20 an hour. Now he flips houses in Northern Virginia — scooping up short sales, rehabbing them and aiming for a quick sell. More

HPV vaccine doesn't alter sexual behavior, study finds. Coni Butler, an accountant in Austin, Tex., and a devout Catholic, encourages her three children to remain celibate before marriage. But that did not stop her from getting them vaccinated against human papillomavirus, or HPV, a sexually.... More

Civil liberties group sues Morgan Stanley over discrimination. The American Civil Liberties Union is filing what it says is the first lawsuit against an investment bank, Morgan Stanley, alleging discrimination for packaging subprime mortgage loans into securities. More

Analysis: smaller firms grab big slice of mobile advertising. When Auntie Anne's, the pretzel chain, wanted to tempt moms in Atlanta shopping malls with free offers, it dished out coupons through smartphones that could be redeemed immediately for a free drink or other specials. More

At 0-32, gay marriage forces seek first win at polls. Irene Huskens has the wedding venue picked out: a charming bed-and-breakfast in southern Maryland. But the wedding is no sure thing. More

Food fight in the school lunchroom. They may be good for you, but some students are having a tough time swallowing the new, healthier school lunches. Across the United States, students are protesting new federal guidelines that have school lunches packing more fruits and.... More

At the corner of hope and worry. Another day begins with a sound softer than a finger-snap, in an Ohio place called Elyria. In the central square of this small city, the gushing water fountain applauds the early-morning chorus of sparrows. A car clears its throat. A door slams.... More

A grand experiment to rein in climate change. LEGGETT, Calif. — Braced against a steep slope, Robert Hrubes cinched his measuring tape around the trunk of one tree after another, barking out diameters like an auctioneer announcing bids. “Twelve point two!” “Fourteen point one!” More

Southern California home prices rise in September. Southern California home prices posted a sixth straight annual increase in September as buying shifted to more expensive houses along the coast and the supply of heavily discounted foreclosed properties dwindled, a research firm reported Friday. More

Doubts, disputes plague new fiscal cliff ideas. Unlike the typical election year, Congress faces a December 31 deadline for coming up with some sort of substitute for the dreaded "fiscal cliff" - about $500 billion worth of tax increases and $109 billion in government spending cuts due to....