Angelina Jolie’s decision to have her breasts removed because she carries a rare defective gene underscored the painful choices women face in trying to prevent breast cancer.    

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Tuesday that most civilian Pentagon employees would be order to take unpaid furloughs of up to 11 days.    

The Congressional Budget Office said the 2013 fiscal deficit would fall to about $642 billion, or 4 percent of G.D.P., about $200 billion less than it estimated just three months ago.    

Gov. Mark Dayton signed a measure Tuesday giving gay couples the right to marry, making Minnesota the 12th state in the nation to permit same-sex marriage.    

The Georgia Institute of Technology will offer a master’s degree in computer science that can be earned entirely through so-called massive open online courses, or MOOCs.    

Charles Steger, the Virginia Tech University president who led the college during the 2007 mass shooting, this week announced plans to retire as soon as a successor is found.    

A judge has reduced a landmark $240 million verdict to $1.6 million against Henry’s Turkey Service of Goldthwaite, Tex for 32 mentally disabled workers who suffered years of abuse.    

A Southern legal advocacy group has claimed in a lawsuit that the State of South Carolina should not have surgically altered a 16-month-old child in its custody.    

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who was convicted of killing three babies born alive at his Philadelphia clinic, was spared a possible death sentence Tuesday in a deal with prosecutors.    

Mr. Estes’s life captured America’s imagination, with its tales of business scams, political payoffs, covered-up killings and White House conspiracies.    

This Friday, I will be the third person in my entire family to graduate from high school. This is so important to me, and it’s so strange that my senior year is coming to an end.    

The spending plan released by Gov. Jerry Brown disappointed Democratic lawmakers who had hoped that rising revenues would finance social programs.    

The possibility that the detainee, a Sudanese man, may not be released from the Guantánamo Bay prison threatens to undermine the ability of prosecutors to persuade other detainees to plead guilty.    

Lines are being crossed in all directions, with the government seizing journalists’ phone records, and Bloomberg reporters monitoring the actions of their clients.    

A federal panel on Tuesday recommended that states reduce the allowable blood-alcohol content to 0.05 percent from 0.08 percent.    

Videos that examine past events in the context of today’s news.    

The attack hit in a district of Kandahar Province that was a showcase for the American troop surge — and the birthplace of the Taliban.    

Delaying steps to rein in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid means delaying significant attempts to curb the size of the government.    

By the time Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah left Tripoli, eight hours after he arrived, the lines were drawn between the State Department and House Republicans on Benghazi.    

In the middle of the last decade, the number of miles driven — both over all and per capita — began to drop, notes a report to be published on Tuesday by a nonprofit advocacy organization.