Government officials have missed several deadlines to set up new health-insurance exchanges for small businesses and consumers—a key part of the federal health overhaul, Congress's watchdog arm said.

In a wide-ranging speech, President Obama called for launching negotiations with Russia aimed at ending the two nations' military posturing, and a substantial reduction of nuclear arms.

Obama is set to make the case for a new phase in nuclear-weapons reductions in a major foreign-policy speech in Berlin.

Backers of medical-marijuana bills are proposing tighter restrictions on the drug to allay opponents' fears of widespread use, a shift that is helping such legislation advance in additional states.

The Republican-led House voted to impose the strictest new limits on abortion in a decade, revisiting an issue that energizes the GOP's conservative base.

U.S. securities regulators plan to require certain defendants to admit to wrongdoing as a condition of settling securities-fraud charges, SEC Chairman Mary Jo White said Tuesday.

The NSA director mounted his most vigorous defense of data-surveillance programs, saying they helped thwart more than 50 terror plots and might have helped prevent the 9/11 attacks.

Analysis: An immediate obstacle in free-trade talks between the U.S. and Europe is a split over whether such a pact should include regulations of the financial-services sector.

After holding bruising sessions on Syria, international leaders closed a two-day summit here mostly at odds over the long civil war but unanimously endorsing an increasingly uncertain peace process.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced a one-year reprieve on guidelines requiring states to link student test scores to teacher personnel decisions, bowing to pressure from educators.

The kids are getting older, the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue is emptier on weekends, and the nation's first couple is filling the time by hosting casual Friday dinner parties that have been known to stretch past midnight.

A sweeping effort to rewrite the nation's immigration laws would shrink federal deficits during the next two decades, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report that could help win Republican support for the measure.

The G-8 agreed to proposals to tackle tax avoidance and evasion that call for new laws to stop businesses from shifting profits across borders.

Michael Madigan, the nation's longest-serving state House speaker, is the linchpin in trying to fix the $96.8 billion public pension shortfall that is choking Illinois's economy.

Mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn is highlighting her record on the City Council, but a similar strategy failed when her predecessors as council speaker ran for mayor.

Daniel Werfel, acting commissioner at the Internal Revenue Service, will recommend changes to the agency next week stemming from the recent uproar over the targeting of conservative groups, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said.

Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor behind revelations about government surveillance programs, denied he has ties to the Chinese government and said his disclosures were motivated by disappointment in President Obama.

The Supreme Court ruled that Arizona violated federal law when it added a proof-of-citizenship requirement to a federal voter-registration form nearly a decade ago.

President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin clashed openly over Syria as world leaders began a summit, sharply underscoring deepening differences over the civil war.

Republican leaders in the House will face a familiar foe when they bring a massive farm bill to the floor later this week: their own rank-and-file.