Government And Institutions

A federal judge has overturned a New Mexico county's ban on oil and natural gas drilling that was the first of its kind when it was enacted nearly two years ago.

The U.S. may not have "risen from recession" quite as rousingly as President Barack Obama suggested in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night.

Democrat Tom Wolf took office Tuesday as Pennsylvania's 47th chief executive, portraying himself as a political outsider while appealing for cooperation in a divided state government plagued by budget deficits and partisan stalemate.

U.S. and Cuban officials are holding two days of discussions this week about reopening the U.S. embassy in Havana, the first step toward President Barack Obama's goal of ending a half-century of enmity between Cold War foes.

Republicans running Congress have promised to use every weapon in their arsenal to take down President Barack Obama's health care law.

JetBlue Airways' plans for the first, daily non-stop flights linking Reno and New York City have local business and tourism officials excited about the potential impact on the region's broader economy.

President Barack Obama used his last State of the Union to declare 2014 a "Year of Action," and he can claim credit for accomplishing several of the goals he laid out.

Cheap oil doesn't only mean cheaper gas in the tank.

Montana lawmakers considered for the first time Monday whether to regulate electronic cigarettes.

New rules aimed at curbing the wasteful burning of natural gas in North Dakota and making crude oil safer for shipment would be void under a proposal by some Republican lawmakers.

Chinese shares plunged 6.3 percent Monday after the country's securities regulator imposed margin trading curbs on several major brokerages, a possible sign that authorities are trying to rein in the market's big gains.

After tackling pension changes for public employees and teachers, Gov. Jerry Brown is now setting his sights on another big debt: retiree health care benefits.

President Barack Obama is turning to his biggest television audience of the year to pitch tax increases on the wealthiest Americans and put the new Republican Congress in the position of defending top income earners over the middle class.

Inside the Democratic Party, economic policy is often seen as a contest between President Barack Obama's track record and the anti-Wall Street approach advocated by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

After years of being flush with oil money, Alaska now faces drastic budget cuts and having to dip into well-stocked savings to offset unprecedented deficits exacerbated by an unexpected plunge in oil prices.

President Barack Obama will call for increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans by raising the capital gains rate and eliminating a tax break on inheritances, then using the revenue to fund new tax credits and other cost-saving measures for the middle class.

The White House says President Barack Obama will propose in his State of the Union address a plan to impose higher taxes on the wealthy and use the revenue to help middle-class families.

Washington's legal marijuana market opened last summer to a dearth of weed.

The senator representing Democrats on the Budget Committee is vowing to fight efforts by Republicans to prevent money dedicated to paying retirement benefits from being shifted to the disabled.

Regulators have closed a small lender in Florida, making it the first U.S. bank failure of 2015 following 18 closures last year.