WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is heading home to Chicago to celebrate his 49th birthday on Wednesday.

NEW ORLEANS — BP claimed a key milestone Wednesday in the effort to plug its blown-out well as a government report said much of the spilled oil is "gone," heartening officials who have taken heat during the tricky cleanup but leaving some Gulf Coast residents still skeptical.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The first word on whether California's same-sex marriage ban passes scrutiny under the U.S. Constitution is scheduled to come down today when a federal judge issues his ruling in a landmark case.

BERLIN — Several versions of Apple's iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch have potentially serious security problems, a German government agency said in an official warning Wednesday

MANCHESTER, Conn. (AP) -- Omar Thornton sat calmly in a meeting with union representative and his supervisors as they showed a video of him stealing beer from the distributor where he worked

Yes, even dogs are affected by the horrors of war. Gina was once a playful 2-year-old German Shepard until she was deployed to Iraq as a bomb-sniffing dog.

A House panel announced Monday that it had charged Rep. Maxine Waters with violating ethics rules, setting the stage for a second election-season trial for a longtime Democratic lawmaker and adding to the party's political woes.
The charges against Waters, a 10-term California congresswoman, focus on whether she broke the rules in requesting federal help for a bank where her husband was a board member and owned stock. She immediately denied the charges.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – Virginia's lawsuit challenging the Obama administration's health care reform law cleared its first legal hurdle Monday as a federal judge ruled the law raises a host of complex constitutional issues

As BP attempts the "Static Kill" procedure – which will fill the well with mud – clean-up crews are still finding plenty of oil in marshlands and other coastal waters in the Gulf

A second House Democrat, Rep. Maxine Waters of California, could face an ethics trial this fall, charged with a possible conflict of interest involving a bank seeking federal aid. New York Democrat Rep. Charles Rangel also faces an ethics trial this fall on charges that include failure to disclose assets and income, nonpayment of taxes and doing legislative favors for donors to a college center named after him.