WASHINGTON (AP) - Past its own New Year's deadline, a weary Congress sent President Barack Obama legislation to avoid a national "fiscal cliff" of middle class tax increases and spending cuts late Tuesday night in the culmination of a struggle that strained America's divided government to the limit.
PARIS (AP) - Masked and armed thieves used the New Year's Eve fete to rob the flagship Apple store in Paris.
With a wave of her bandaged left hand, and boosted by well wishes from Dr. Phil, Chris Evert and even a young woman she once babysat, Hannah Storm returned to a most comfortable setting - talking in front of a TV camera.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - A suspect is under arrest in connection with a New Year's Eve shooting at a bar in the Old Sacramento area that killed two people, police said Tuesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Legislation to block the "fiscal cliff" is headed to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature. The bill will avoid, for now, the major tax increases and government spending cuts that had been scheduled to take effect with the new year.
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - A couple who became husband and wife on the "Love Float," a surprise reunion between a returning soldier and his little boy, and a grand marshal famed globally for her chimpanzee research were among the highlights of the 124th Rose Parade on Tuesday.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Hugh Hefner's celebrating the new year as a married man once again. The 86-year-old Playboy magazine founder exchanged vows with his "runaway bride," Crystal Harris, at a private Playboy Mansion ceremony on New Year's Eve. Harris, a 26-year-old "Playmate of the Month" in 2009, broke off a previous engagement to Hefner just before they were to be married in 2011. Playboy said on Tuesday that the couple celebrated at a New ...
POINT REYES NATIONAL SEASHORE, Calif. (AP) - Gray whales and elephant seals are putting on a show at Point Reyes National Seashore, delighting beachgoers.
LAKEWOOD, Calif. (AP) - The sheriff's department is investigating two separate New Year's Eve party shootings that claimed the lives of two men and wounded eight other people in the southern suburbs of Los Angeles.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Growing concern that problems with the new electronic Oscar voting system could lead to record-low turnout has prompted the motion picture academy to extend the deadline for members to vote for Oscar nominations.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Emergency legislation to avoid the economy-threatening fiscal cliff ran into vehement New Year's Day opposition from House Republicans, casting doubt on the divided government's ability to prevent widespread tax increases and painful, across-the-board federal spending cuts.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to recover in a New York hospital where she's being treated for a blood clot in her head.
PASADENA (AP) - The 124th Rose Parade in Pasadena kicked off on a chilly New Year's morning with the theme "Oh the Places You'll Go!" named in honor of the Dr. Seuss book.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A top executive with the company proposing to build a football stadium in downtown Los Angeles says no NFL team has yet expressed serious interest in moving to Southern California.
BALTIMORE (AP) - Same-sex couples in Maryland were greeted with cheers and noisemakers held over from New Year's Eve parties, as gay marriage became legal in the first state south of the Mason-Dixon Line on New Year's Day.
Two major sponsors, Oakley and Nike, distanced themselves from Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius on Monday after the South African sports star was charged with murder in the shooting death of his girlfriend.
Somebody hacked Burger King's Twitter account on Monday, posting obscene messages and changing its profile picture to a McDonald's logo.
Waiting in line for the bus, a Pennsylvania kindergartener tells her pals she's going to shoot them with a Hello Kitty toy that makes soap bubbles. In Maryland, a 6-year-old boy pretends his fingers are a gun during a playground game of cops and robbers. In Massachusetts, a 5-year-old boy attending an after-school program makes a gun out of Legos and points it at other students while "simulating the sound of gunfire," as one school official put it.
PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) - Oscar Pistorius told a packed courtroom Tuesday that he shot his girlfriend to death by mistake, thinking she was a robber. The prosecutor called it premeditated murder.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The CIA thrillers "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty" have won top screenplay honors from the Writers Guild of America.