Two people charged in a hit-and-run accident that killed a USC student and severely injured another each pleaded no contest Thursday to a single felony, prosecutors said.

With time running out on the Senate calendar, the banking committee chairman says he wants the panel to begin considering the bill March 22, even though the GOP can block legislation.

With time running out this year for the Senate to deal with financial regulatory reform legislation, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said Thursday he planned to offer his own bill after lengthy bipartisan talks failed to produce a consensus.

Pitching his healthcare reform legislation in suburban Missouri, the president announces a broadened initiative to block fraud in government health programs.

Promoting a new initiative to reduce waste in Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs, President Obama traveled to suburban St. Louis on Wednesday to keep up momentum behind his push to complete work on a health overhaul this month.

With populations continuing to decline, wildlife agencies issue a plan to designate critical habitat zones to protect the species. Such listing could affect offshore drilling and other activities.

Federal agencies are proposing to increase protections for loggerhead turtles, the long-lived sea creatures known for their big heads and capacity to swim thousands of miles across the Pacific.

Manufacturing booms, but its importance to the overall economy has diminished.

Improbable as it seems, the brightest spot so far in the nation’s spotty economic recovery is a sector long considered all but dead — good-old-fashioned manufacturing.

American Colleen R. LaRose, 46, is accused of using the Internet to recruit and assist Muslim terrorist operations in Europe and Asia.

Using e-mail, YouTube videos, phony travel documents and a burning desire to kill “or die trying,” a middle-aged American woman from Pennsylvania helped recruit a network for suicide attacks and other terrorist strikes in Europe and Asia, according to a federal grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday.

A swelling tide of money could put the business group in a better position to sway elections.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is building a large-scale grass-roots political operation that has begun to rival those of the major political parties, funded by record-setting amounts of money raised from corporations and wealthy individuals.

Pakistani officials reverse earlier statements that they had arrested the spokesman and propagandist for the terrorist network. They now say the man seized in Karachi is a Pennsylvania native.

The American Al Qaeda operative arrested in Karachi over the weekend was not the Southern California native wanted by the U.S. on treason charges for his involvement in the terror network, Pakistani intelligence officials said Monday.

The company has in recent weeks complained that the odds are stacked against its bid for the $35-billion government contract, saying the Air Force wrote specifications that favor its rival, Boeing.

After fighting for nearly a decade to win one the largest military contracts in U.S. history, Northrop Grumman Corp. was expected to announce late Monday that it was dropping out of the competition to replace the aging Air Force fleet of Eisenhower-era aerial refueling tankers.

Iraqis go to the polls as explosions shake Baghdad. In the Ur neighborhood, bombs flatten two apartment buildings within 30 minutes. There also are blasts in Fallouja and Ramadi.

Bombs and mortars pounded Baghdad on Sunday morning, killing at least 40 people and wounding dozens more, as Iraqis sought to cast their ballots on a crucial national election day.