CONGRESS

Democrats in the U.S. Senate will renew next week their push for equal-pay legislation with the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill with an embattled history that would help close the wage gap between men and women that experts say costs each woman about $434,000 over the course of her career.

Democrats and Republicans are working to blame each other's policies for a lackluster May U.S. jobs report, cementing the critiques that will reverberate through the general election in November.

Republicans on Thursday suggested two potential routes to prevent the interest rate on federally subsidized student loans from doubling on July 1st.

Scientists have finished sequencing the genomes of the domestic tomato and one of its wild relatives, paving the way for more precise breeding in tomatoes and other plants.

Shares of Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), the No. 1 social network, jumped 5 percent in late Thursday trading after they set a new low of $26.83.

The Sunlight Foundation's new Politwoops tool allows users to see tweets deleted by U.S. politicians.

Only the Supreme Court can finally decide this unique case, wrote First Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Michael Boudin.

The former Louisiana governor, who championed a reform to the nation's campaign finance system, plans to form a nonprofit to tackle those issues.

Can you really protect your allies while still cutting the military? That's the conundrum the U.S. is now facing, even as it talks about pivoting back to Asia and returning in force to the Western Pacific.

The exodus from President Bush's signature education overhaul continues: Eight more states have applied for, and been granted, waivers exempting them from a testing requirement central to No Child Left Behind.

The U.S. State Department is under pressure from members of congress and the Justice Department to designate the militant Islamic sect Boko Haram, based in northern Nigeria, a foreign terrorist organization. Nigeria, and American scholars, disagree.

Time to stop dropping the presumptive and the likely qualifiers: It is all but certain that after Texans finish voting in Tuesday's Republican presidential primary, Mitt Romney will have secured the 1,144 delegates he needs to win the nomination.

Two laws preventing the federal government from recognizing and providing benefits to same-sex couples are unconstitutional, a federal judge in California ruled.

Three months after Rush Limbaugh characterized a Georgetown Law School student Sandra Fluke as a ?slut? and a ?prostitute,? a liberal-backed boycott of the right-winger?s radio show has been effective.

India Government may go slow on boosting diesel prices as the recent steep petrol hike has generated strong opposition from both the public and opposition parties.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday showed near-unanimous support for a bill that helps fund the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a regulatory powerhouse with sweeping influence over the foods Americans eat and the medicines they take. The bill, which passed by a vote of 96 to 1, aims to speed approval of new drugs and devices and ensure food safety.

U.S. senators scandalized by Pakistan's jailing of a doctor for helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden voted on Thursday to cut aid to Islamabad by $33 million - one million for each year in the doctor's sentence.

The staff of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has concluded its investigation into Lehman Brothers Holdings and will not likely recommend charges, according to the excerpt of a memo.

The education reform agenda Mitt Romney unveiled during a Wednesday speech to the Latino Forum in many ways appears similar to the Obama administration's agenda, but there are a few key differences.

The definition of marriage has been debated in the halls of Congress and state Legislatures, in the voting booth and on the Internet. Now one man in favor of same-sex marriage is taking his argument to the dictionary, attempting to get dictionary.com to change its definition of marriage in a petition that has been signed by more than 27,000 supporters.

Pressing his party's advantage in anticipation of a year-end budget battle, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Democrats in the Senate would preserve an impending $55 billion reduction in military spending if Republicans refuse to budge on new revenue.