Bill Chappell

Negotiations over the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill Congress will consider this week included how to handle Washington, D.C.'s bid to legalize marijuana. Some 65 percent of the federal district's voters approved the move via ballot initiative last month.

Even before November's vote, many saw the measure's future ...

On this cold and rainy Tuesday, Bafana Khumalo stood in front of the White House with a controversial demand for President Obama: The U.S. should provide foreign aid to fund abortions for women who've been raped during conflicts and in other circumstances. Currently, the 1973 Helms Amendment prohibits the ...

Faced with a Thursday deadline to finance the U.S. government, leaders of both parties in Congress have worked out a $1.1 trillion spending bill to fund the government until October 2015. But a vote isn't likely to come before the day of the deadline.

Update at 8:45 p.m. ET: Welcome, ...

If you're able and eager to write an annual check for roughly $100,000, you might expect to be hearing soon from the Republican and Democratic national committees.

In another small step on behalf of big money in politics, Capitol Hill lawmakers agreed Tuesday afternoon on a small provision to be ...

It was the first time a living Nobel Prize recipient had ever sold his medal. And now scientist James Watson, 86, will hang on to the medal he won for his work on DNA, after a Russian billionaire who bought the medal for $4.75 million at auction says he ...

He's doing it his way – even though "My Way" won't be on Bob Dylan's new album of Frank Sinatra covers.

Dylan's new album, Shadows in the Night, is being released in February. It's his 36^th studio album, and will come three years after Tempest.

"I don't see myself as ...

Cho Hyun-ah, whose family runs Korean Air, caused a stir over the weekend after she demanded that a Korea-bound jetliner return to a gate at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where it had been preparing to take off.

The reason? Seated in first class, Cho was angered that ...

Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton suffered two fractured in his back Tuesday but escaped without other injury, after a vehicle he was driving crashed around 12:30 p.m. ET. The truck reportedly flipped several times on a bridge in central Charlotte, where Church Street passes over Interstate 277.

"The severity of ...

Signs of water currents and sediments are seen in the latest photos NASA's Curiosity rover sent home from Mars, the space agency said Monday. The images suggest "ancient Mars maintained a climate that could have produced long-lasting lakes," NASA says.

In the huge Gale Crater where Curiosity has been exploring, ...

Following up on a controversial campaign promise, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's bill to ban horse-drawn carriages reached the City Council on Monday, in a move to phase out the carriages that often give tours around Central Park.

The legislation says that as of June 1, 2016, "it ...

The outcome of an outlandish TV stunt Sunday night didn't go down well with many viewers, who say they were duped into expecting that the Discovery special Eaten Alive would actually portray a man being ingested by an anaconda.

But that didn't happen, forcing the network to defend the ...

Frustration about two recent cases in which unarmed black men were killed by police brought new protests and road closures to New York City, Chicago, Washington, Boston, Cleveland and elsewhere Thursday.

Many of the demonstrators timed their marches to disrupt rush-hour traffic. In New York, the iconic Brooklyn Bridge was ...

The Nobel Prize medal that James Watson won for helping explain how DNA is structured has a new owner, as the 1962 gold medal was bought for more than $4.75 million at auction Thursday. Watson has said he'll donate much of the money to educational institutions.

The identity of the ...

In a dizzying finish, American scientist Elizabeth Herndon set a new women's world record in the Beer Mile World Championships in Austin, Texas, last night, breaking through a tight field to obliterate the previous mark by 11 seconds.

In the men's race, Canadian mailman Corey Gallagher relied on ...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton have announced plans to give training to police officers to help them treat all citizens with equal respect and with equal regard for their safety.

"These changes are happening because the people demanded it," de ...

"This fight ain't over. It's just begun. I'm determined to get justice for my husband," Esaw Garner said Wednesday, "because he shouldn't have been killed in that way. He shouldn't have been killed in any way."

Garner spoke at a news conference hours after a grand jury declined to ...

As word spread of a grand jury's decision not to indict a police officer in the chokehold death of Staten Island man Eric Garner, so did word of planned protests in New York and other cities. And while a main target was Wednesday night's lighting of the Christmas tree at ...

A grand jury's decision that a police officer shouldn't face charges over the death of Staten Island man Eric Garner has sparked anger and protests — along with a Twitter conversation about the idea that police treat people differently based on their race.

The hashtag #CrimingWhileWhite sparked a ...

Saying that several arms of the U.S. Department of Justice have been monitoring the inquiry into the death of Staten Island resident Eric Garner, Attorney General Eric Holder said, "the Justice Department will proceed with a federal civil rights investigation of Mr. Garner's death."

Holder promised an "independent, thorough, fair ...

With terms like mahoosive and al desko, the editors of OxfordDictionaries.com say they've made the largest quarterly update in their history, adding definitions for 1,000 words.

We'll clarify that while the digital service is affiliated with Oxford University, it's officially separate from the venerable dictionary.

The new additions range ...