With support from a lone Republican, a key Senate committee Tuesday approved a middle-of-the-road health care plan that moves President Barack Obama’s goal of wider and affordable coverage a giant step closer to becoming law.

A Russian court ruled against Josef Stalin’s grandson Tuesday in a libel suit over a newspaper article that said the Soviet dictator sent thousands of people to their deaths.

President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to encourage his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism.

A mother of three who gained national notoriety after she openly carried a loaded handgun to her daughter’s soccer game was shot dead along with her husband in what appeared to be a murder-suicide.

A suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle outside the Indian Embassy in the busy center of Afghanistan’s capital on Thursday, killing 17 people and wounding nearly 80 in the second major attack in the city in less than a month.

No one had looked at its location with an infrared instrument until now.

Two hundred years after he died mysteriously, explorer Meriwether Lewis is being honored with a service memorializing him as a gung-ho hero.

Supreme Court justices on Tuesday indicated that a federal law aimed at graphic videos of dog fights and other acts of animal cruelty goes too far in limiting U.S. free speech rights.

National leaders of the Pagans Motorcycle Club and more than 50 members and associates of the outlaw biker gang are accused of plotting to kill and extort rivals to consolidate the club’s power, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday.

For Edgar Allan Poe, 2009 has been a better year than 1849. After dozens of events in several cities to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth, he’s about to get the grand funeral that a writer of his stature should have received when he died.

There’s good news for people worried about winter heating bills.

A reunion between a Tennessee mother and her kidnapped newborn was brief when state officials placed him and his three siblings in foster care, they said for their safety.

A former Yale University lab technician charged with murdering a graduate student last month is set to face a Connecticut judge.

Gourmet, the nation’s oldest food magazine, is being closed by Conde Nast Publications as the high-end magazine publisher tries to weather a devastating advertising slump.

Finally, South America gets an Olympics. The 2016 Games are going to Rio de Janeiro.

The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in September, the highest since June 1983, as employers cut far more jobs than expected.

The race for the 2016 Olympics has came down to just Rio de Janeiro and Madrid, with the International Olympic Committee eliminating Chicago in a stunning first round of voting.

For those who expected General Motors’ once-funky Saturn brand to live on with a new owner, there has been a sad twist. Saturn, once billed as a different kind of car company, appears as dead as Pontiac and Oldsmobile.

Rescue workers pulled victims, some screaming in pain, from the heavy rubble of buildings felled by a powerful earthquake that killed at least 531 people. The death toll was expected to rise.

Housing construction rose in August and the number of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment aid fell unexpectedly last week, adding to signs the recession has ended.

A Yale lab technician was arrested Thursday at a hotel and charged with murdering a graduate student whose body was found stuffed in the wall of a research building on what would have been her wedding day.

The Obama administration is shelving an Eastern European missile defense plan that has been a major irritant in relations with Russia, a U.S. ally said Thursday. The Pentagon confirmed a “major adjustment” of the system designed to guard against Iranian missiles.

Somali pirates tried but failed to hijack a North Korean cargo ship when crew members fought back with improvised fire bombs and sped away, a maritime official said Tuesday.

Baltimore police say a Johns Hopkins University medical student armed with a samurai sword killed an intruder in his garage.

President Barack Obama heads to Wall Street today to make a major speech on the U.S. economy.

The Dalai Lama met today with two senior U.S. officials ahead of his scheduled visit to the United States next month, his spokesman said.

Vowing to never falter in the pursuit of al-Qaida and its allies, President Barack Obama placed a wreath under rainy skies at the Pentagon in memory of the victims of 9/11 on the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

The nation marked the eight anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by honoring the spirit of those who rushed forward to help, from sifting through the fiery rubble at ground zero to sending supplies from thousands of miles away.

President Barack Obama will lead the country in pausing to remember the victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The number of Americans without health insurance rose to 46.3 million last year as people began losing jobs and coverage in the current recession. The poverty rate hit 13.2 percent, an 11-year high.