Bee Nation/World News

What would the United States be like without a first-rate federal judiciary? We are about to find out if two of the three branches of government have their way.

Politics still might get in the way of a final agreement on a bipartisan immigration bill.

President Barack Obama's decision to launch his own political organization has some Democrats wondering: Is he just in it for himself?

An Israeli secret agent whose death in Israel's highest security prison was kept secret for nearly two years may have inadvertently revealed details of one of Israel's most important intelligence-gathering networks, according to reports on the case published Monday.

The Obama administration's Syria policy was unraveling Monday after weekend developments left the Syrian Opposition Coalition and its military command in turmoil, with the status of its leader uncertain and its newly selected prime minister rejected by the group's military wing.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday and Wednesday will confront two distinct gay marriage cases, which together pose some very sensitive questions. Here's a rundown.

Across Israel on Friday, news stations aired a special live broadcast of President Barack Obama's last day in the Jewish state with a headline summarizing his visit: "US President wins our hearts and minds."

The scene could not have been imagined just two years ago. Before a million Turkish Kurds, many waving their own tricolor flag, and with millions more Turks following it live on national television, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdish PKK insurgency called via written letter for an end to his 30-year insurgency.

Nearly a dozen burly California raisin growers watched intently Wednesday as Supreme Court justices struggled to figure out how their industry works.

Obama administration officials have made it clear that the top agenda item for the president when he arrives today is to win the hearts of the Israeli people. He has a lot of work to do.

The Republican Party's got a big image problem that won't be easily overcome, as a new GOP study found it's often viewed as the party of "stuffy old men" with a weak, ineffective message.

Shortly before noon every Friday, men and boys with prayer rugs in hand walk by the thousands through the main highway junction west of Baghdad, head down lanes meant for vehicular traffic, and stake out patches of pavement. Soon they're prostrating themselves as far as the eye can see.

An Arizona law requiring would-be voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship seemed to divide Supreme Court justices Monday in a case important to many states that want to stiffen their own voting standards.

President George W. Bush kept it simple in his short television address the evening of March 19, 2003: U.S. forces had begun their campaign to unseat Saddam Hussein, he said.

President Barack Obama will hear plenty about Syria when he steps off Air Force One in the Middle East this week, very likely facing new pressure from worried allies to help rebels oust Syrian President Bashar Assad but carrying no change in U.S. policy that could calm fears of the crisis spreading across borders and destabilizing the region.

In the spring of 1965, the FBI in Washington received a letter from Concordia Parish in northeastern Louisiana. Addressed to the bureau's director, J. Edgar Hoover, the letter pleaded for justice in the killing of a well-respected black merchant.

Pakistan's Parliament completed its term Saturday and the coalition government was dissolved, the first time in the country's history that a democratically elected government has served its full five years in office.

Congress stumbled badly the last time it rewrote military law amid a furor over sexual assaults. Now, driven by fresh outrage over an Air Force case, some lawmakers seek new changes in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Their effort is shadowed by lessons that might be learned, or lost, from past Capitol Hill mistakes.

Rebels from Syria's Islamist factions now control large parts of three contiguous provinces in north and eastern Syria, and they are working to install civil administrations there in line with their ambitions of establishing an Islamic state after the fall of President Bashar Assad.

The middle class is growing – just not in the United States or Europe – but in the far reaches of the globe, a change that very likely will move power away from the world’s current centers of prosperity, a United Nations study released Thursday concludes.

Responding to a new level of belligerence from North Korea, the United States will place more missile interceptors in Alaska to respond to a nuclear threat that’s advancing faster than anticipated, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday. His announcement comes as North Korea has ratcheted up its rhetoric, threatening to attack the U.S. and taking a more aggressive tone toward South Korea. Fourteen new ground-based interceptors will be placed mostly in a reopened missile field at Fort Greely, bringing the number of U.S. interceptors in the area to 44. Hagel said the $1 billion program should be ready by 2017.

North Korea on Monday canceled the armistice agreement that nearly 60 years ago brought a cease-fire to the Korean War, leaving a world of analysts wondering how far the secretive police state will go to show its displeasure with South Korea and its American ally, which still has 28,500 troops based in the South.

For nine years, a pair of Capitol Hill lawmakers have asked the president of the United States to pardon posthumously American boxing legend Jack Johnson.

The budget cuts in Washington have not hit home in America, at least not yet.

An Egyptian court issued split verdicts Saturday in the deadliest soccer riot in the country's history, confirming death sentences for 21 fans accused of planning the violence, giving life terms to five others, and sentencing to long prison stretches two senior police commanders.

The national debate over firearms regulation is often presented as a battle of extremes: those who view any effort to tighten gun laws as an infringement of rights vs. those who see guns as a menace to society.

For Zuzana Navelkova, it was just another day at the office. She showed up for work last month and found a 2-pound bag of frozen Swedish meatballs awaiting her attention.

North Korea's latest threats to annihilate its enemies have included a vow to scrap the 1953 armistice, the main legal document that theoretically stands in the way of a resumption of the Korean War, a conflict that by some estimates left nearly 5 million people dead, including more than 33,700 U.S. soldiers.

South Dakota became the first state in the nation to enact a law explicitly authorizing school employees to carry guns on the job, under a measure signed into law Friday by Gov. Dennis Daugaard.

MEXICO CITY – Three former heads of state are urging the United States to engage in a serious discussion of drug legalization, saying its counternarcotics policies are becoming untenable in the wake of voter approval last fall of measures that legalized the recreational use of marijuana in Washington state and Colorado.

WASHINGTON – An Air Force general who overturned the sexual assault conviction of a fellow fighter pilot finds himself caught in a political crossfire that could change military justice – perhaps, some fear, for the worse.

WASHINGTON – The State Department backed off Thursday on its decision to honor a young woman for her bravery in the Egyptian uprising after it emerged that she had quoted Adolf Hitler on Jews, celebrated a suicide bombing and posted anti-American commentary on her Twitter account.

CAIRO – It was the kind of game that used to lock Egyptians in 90 minutes of suspense. Cairo's Zamalek team was up against Suez's PetroJet. Zamalek's Ahmed Gaafar scored the last of three goals in that shutout game, after the ball bounced off PetroJet's goalie. Gaafar kissed the ground as the television announcer roared a loud "Goal!" The stadium, however, was silent. There were no fans to see the game.