The Senate cleared its year-end plate of some must-do work Saturday as it passed a critical budget bill that blends money for the Pentagon with additional help for the jobless.

Jubilant Democrats locked in Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson as the 60th and decisive vote for historic health care legislation Saturday, putting President Barack Obama's signature issue firmly on a path for Christmas Eve passage.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A friend is speaking out in support of Josh Powell, the man police consider the sole person of interest in the disappearance of his wife nearly two weeks ago.

Anthony Marshall has had a life of privilege and pain as philanthropist Brooke Astor's only child.

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - San Jose police are testing head-mounted cameras to record interactions with the public.

The United States may soon see its prison population drop for the first time in almost four decades, a milestone in a nation that locks up more people than any other.

Bicyclists who planned to go topless to protest the removal of a Brooklyn bike lane switched gears Saturday, pinning plastic breasts to their jackets as they rolled into a snowstorm.

Hawaii public schools are closed most Fridays, rats scurry across bananas in uninspected stores and there may not be enough money to run the next election.

ASHLAND, Ore. (AP) - A city council member in an Oregon town noted for its Shakespeare festival and its occasional dustups over public nudity plans a showing in his art gallery of nude portraits and conceptual art involving naked people.

It was the slap heard 'round the coalfields: Cordelia Ruth Tucker, wearing the fluorescent-striped shirt of a miner, strode past West Virginia state troopers and into a stream of marchers protesting mountaintop removal...