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President Obama announced today he is nominating Thomas Perez, currently in charge of civil rights at the Justice Department, to be the country's next Labor secretary.

Introducing him in the East Room of the White House, Obama said Perez "knows what it's like to climb the ladder of opportunity," and ...

A week after the Arkansas legislature passed the strictest measure in the country on abortion, North Dakota's legislature passed a bill that goes further and would ban abortions as soon as a heartbeat is detected.

Arkansas' bill banned abortions after 12 weeks; North Dakota's could ban them as early ...

A federal judge in California ruled today that the FBI cannot secretly demand data from banks and phone companies in national security cases. The judge said orders that keep those requests secret violate the First Amendment.

NPR's Carrie Johnson filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"The demands known ...

We've explained it many times: Physicists are irked when we in the media call the Higgs Boson, "The God Particle."

The Higgs is important because the elusive subatomic particle is believed to give everything its mass. But as Marcelo Gleiser — of NPR's 13.7 — explained, the ...

With a vote today in the House of Delegates, Maryland's General Assembly has approved a bill that abolishes the death penalty in the state.

If signed into law by Gov. Martin O'Malley, which is expected, Maryland will become the 18th state to end capital punishment.

The Baltimore Sun reports:

Update at 3:09 p.m. ET. 14 Additional Interceptors:

The United States will deploy 14 additional ground-based missile interceptors (GBIs) to combat the nuclear attack threats from North Korea and Iran, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said today during a press briefing.

"The United States stands firm against aggression," Hagel said.

Nearly ten years since the United States invaded Iraq, researchers at Brown University are assessing the cost of the war.

The report, from Brown's Watson Institute for International Studies, is comprehensive, taking a look at the direct and indirect costs of war, but from the university's press release, ...

Casey Fury, the civilian employee who set fire to the USS Miami nuclear-powered attack submarine in Maine was sentenced to 17 years in prison, today.

Fury pleaded guilty to two counts of arson, one for the Miami fire, the other for a fire he set weeks later.

Sea Coast ...

Backpedaling, the Obama administration is now admitting that it released more than 2,000 undocumented immigrants from immigration jails because of budget contraints prompted by the sequester.

Earlier, the Associated Press ran a story citing the number, but officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcements said the number was actually in the ...

The Reuters journalist Matthew Keys — whom many know by his Twitter handle @TheMatthewKeys — was indicted today for allegedly "conspiring with members of the hacker group 'Anonymous' to hack into and alter a Tribune Company website."

Keys, 26, is a deputy social media editor at the wire service ...

Earlier today, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation banning assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.

The legislation is written by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, and as expected, the bill was sent to the full senate with a strictly party-line vote.

But before the vote, Feinstein had ...

As the sun rose over Latin America this morning, we're getting a clearer picture of how Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio — now Pope Francis — was viewed in his home of Argentina and what the first pope from the New World could mean for the continent.

We've read through dozens ...

Pope Francis goes into history as the first pontiff from the New World.

For Latin America in particular, this is a momentous occasion: It is home to 483 million Catholics, or a little more than 40 percent of the global population.

Pope Francis was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, of ...

A new pope has been selected. As is customary, the first sign that the 115 cardinals had to come to agreement, was that white smoke emerged from a chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel.

Here's video of the moment the smoke came up:

Here's a bit of ...

The Boy Scouts of America has sent a detailed survey about its exclusion of gay members to 1.1 million scouts.

As The New York Times reports, the survey doesn't just pose a simple yes or no question on whether the Scouts should lift its ban on gay members and ...

The percentage of American Catholics who identify as "strong" members of the church has declined to a 40-year low.

That's according to new analysis of the General Social Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The analysis found that in 2012, only about 27 percent of ...

Florida's lieutenant governor abruptly stepped down on Wednesday, two days after Florida law enforcement officials questioned her involvement with a non-profit under investigation.

According to The (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union, Jennifer Carroll sent a resignation letter to Gov. Rick Scott that did not give a motive for her resignation. Adam ...

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $9.9 million to four men who allege they were abused by former priest Michael Baker, the men's attorney tells the AP.

The Los Angeles Times reports the settlement stems from what Cardinal Roger Mahony, who is in ...

Ewald-Heinrich Von Kleist, the last survivor of a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, has died, the Associated Press reports quoting his wife.

Von Kleist, a former German army lieutenant, first volunteered to wear a suicide vest in 1944. He was scheduled to meet Hitler to model a new uniform and ...

The group of scientists working with NASA's Curiosity rover made a big announcement during a press conference today: "We have found a habitable environment that is so benign" if there was water there, "you be able to drink it," John P. Grotzinger, professor of geology at Caltech, said summing up ...