Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Jo White is eyeing a Charles Schwab Corp. executive for a top post overseeing trading firms and stock exchanges

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing said he won't seek a second term as leader of the financially troubled city, which recently became the largest in the country placed under state oversight.

Federal transportation-safety officials Tuesday proposed nearly halving drivers' legal blood-alcohol limit to 0.05% to reduce alcohol-related traffic accidents.

Federal budget cuts are taking a toll on the office parks that have mushroomed for years in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, along with the retailers and restaurants that depend on government workers.

Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, convicted of killing three babies who were born alive, has agreed to give up his right to an appeal and will be spared a potential death sentence.

In the debates over government austerity and deficits, some find it more entertaining to focus on extremes, but the lessons of the past few years are more subtle, writes David Wessel.

More people than previously thought predicted a major change in U.S. health-care policy that led to an insider-trading probe, according to documents assembled by congressional investigators.

Minnesota is set to become the 12th state to allow same-sex marriage after the state Senate voted to legalize it— a swift reversal in a Midwestern state that less than a year ago was weighing a constitutional ban.

Obama said Monday those responsible for any improper scrutiny of conservative groups' tax status would be held "fully accountable," hours before it emerged that the current and former heads of the IRS were informed last May that tea-party groups had been targeted.

The Justice Department seized records of 20 separate phone lines used by Associated Press reporters or editors, in a move that officials familiar with the case said was intended to gather information for a leak probe.

The Navy will take a big step into the drone age Tuesday when it catapults a batwing prototype of an unmanned plane off the deck of an aircraft carrier for the first time.

President Obama again defended the response to an attack on a diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, and called a Republican-led investigation a politically driven "sideshow."

Cleveland officials are calling for a review of the city's missing-persons investigations after the police department disclosed it had long ago removed from a national database one of the three women who reappeared.

A Philadelphia doctor who performed abortions was convicted Monday of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies who were killed with scissors after they were born alive.

A federal appeals court agreed to temporarily put on hold the unrestricted sale of the Plan B emergency contraceptive to all ages while it considers a government appeal of a lower court ruling.

Worries over immigrants potentially taking jobs from native-born Americans run high in parts of the nation, but some U.S. cities are taking a different view: Wooing immigrants can reverse declines in population.

The next chief of the Federal Reserve will decide when to reverse easy-money policies, a judgment that could strangle the economic recovery if made too early or trigger runaway inflation if made too late.

After four years of crises that threatened to plunge the U.S. economy back into recession, the road ahead at last looks comparatively free of roadblocks. But progress remains slow.

The IRS's scrutiny of conservative groups went beyond those with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names—as the agency admitted Friday—to also include ones worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to "make America a better place to live."

Credit-rating firms' controversial business model looks set to escape wholesale changes as regulators struggle to agree on an alternative.